55 Posts Found

When we ask, “What works in all companies?” we’re looking for an absolute formula in a field — competition in a marketplace setting — that is inherently relative. The answer is, “There isn’t one formula.” If everybody in the industry follows the same prescription, they won’t all be successful. Once we accept this, we’re in the realm of making judgments under uncertainty that are different … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Phil Rosenzweig | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Best Practices, Competition, Management

Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in men.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Sarnoff | Source: “The Wilson Quarterly” | Subject: Competition

In business, unlike in nature, the fittest often survive by helping create the environment that favors them.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Newkirk | Source: “strategy+business” | Subjects: Competition, Management, Observations, Strategy

Most organizations are good at collecting internally focused data, but few systematically provide insight about a company’s external environment. For example, only 21 percent regularly track how their competitors are performing. Business is not an us-vs.-us exercise, yet management reports rarely touch on the world outside.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Kugel | Source: “Business Finance Magazine” | Subjects: Competition, Competitive Intelligence, Management, Measurement

If you gave away every idea you ever had, people would still step up to ask you to help them, or do it for them. The same can’t be said if you don’t share with them at all. …As our friend Sean D’Souza likes to say, “Give the ideas. Sell the system.”

Content: Quotation | Source: “GrokDotCom” | Subjects: Competition, Information

Over the past few decades, many companies have become obsessed with benchmarking-comparing their performance with rivals on industry-wide standard metrics. But benchmarking pulls companies in exactly the wrong direction, because it leaves them looking more similar to their rivals, rather than more different.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Knowledge@Emory” | Subjects: Best Practices, Competition

Lazy orthodoxies can allow new entrants to thrive in niches that seem full of capable incumbents.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Knowledge@Wharton” | Subjects: Competition, Opportunity

Performing similar activities better than rivals may be essential to superior performance, but tends to drive companies to competitive convergence rather than uniqueness.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Ivey Business Journal” | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

When growth rate exceeds the cost of capital, the competitive relationships become inherently unstable. Aggressive competition then produces revolution instead of evolution in competitive relationships.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)” | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

It is possible to demonstrate that at various stages of product development the critical strategy element shifts from technical lead, to financial resources, then organization policy coordination and finally to market share.

It is also possible to demonstrate that competitive equilibrium is highly unstable under certain conditions, conditionally unstable under others, and finally the equilibrium will become almost certainly essentially stable.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)” | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

Failure to gain market share even with superior costs is failure to compete. This failure is also a failure to achieve even lower costs.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)” | Subject: Competition

The majority of the products in most companies are cash traps. They will absorb more money forever than they will generate. This is true even though they may show a profit according to the books of account. Continued investment sends good money after bad. Escape from the trap requires extreme measures. Either stop investing and manage solely to maximize cash withdrawal, or invest so heavily … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)” | Subjects: Competition, Economics

The fact is that some markets yield more opportunities for advantage than others, and some none at all. Some companies invest heavily in pursuit of the mirage of a secure future competitive edge. Nowhere is this more likely to end in disappointment than where there is blind faith in the value of market share or in the rewards of technological superiority.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)” | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

Many executives believe that competitive advantage is best achieved by providing the most value for the lowest cost. This is the traditional paradigm for corporate success. Providing the most value for the lowest cost in the least amount of time is the new paradigm for corporate success.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Boston Consulting Group (BCG)” | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

Any dimension of performance that is the basis of competition must be a dimension on which existing offerings are not yet “good enough” to meet customers’ needs. That is why they are willing to pay more in order to get more of it. On other dimensions, where performance is already more than good enough or simply not as important, still greater levels of performance will … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: “Deloitte” | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

In the outsourcing realm, core competence thinking typically manifests itself as a prescription for firms to outsource IT-intensive processes because the IT elements that drive process capabilities rarely qualify as a firm’s core competence. But outsourcing vendors make running IT infrastructures the focus of their business. For them, these activities are their core competence. This reasoning is encapsulated in marketing slogans such as “make your … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: “Deloitte” | Subjects: Competition, Outsourcing / BPO

When the performance of two or more competing products has improved beyond what the market demands, customers can no longer base their choice on which is the higher performing product. The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price.

Content: Quotation | Source: “MarketingProfs” | Subject: Competition

While markets are competitive, competition works more slowly than we sometimes assume, i.e. customers can be slow to shift allegiance. This, however, is less a result of positive loyalty than of sheer inertia which means that customers put up with unsatisfactory products and services to a remarkable degree.

Content: Quotation | Source: “Emerald Now” | Subjects: Competition, Customer Related

Let me suggest that the military metaphors should be replaced with the language of sports. Despite the desire to win, all sports have a cooperative element as well as a competitive element. One has to agree on the rules of the game, the referees, and what trophies go to the winners. One can want to win, yet remain friends both during and after the game. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: “Prism (Arthur D. Little)” | Subjects: Competition, Economics

[In the past,] a new product gave the inventor a monopoly power to set higher prices and earn higher profits. The inventor had a new product that others did not have. In contrast, a new process still left the inventor in a competitive business making a competitive product. The inventor’s competitors knew how to make the product, and they could always lower their prices to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: “Prism (Arthur D. Little)” | Subjects: Competition, Economics