By Jeffrey Phillips and Alex Verjovsky
You’ve heard the saying “fighting the last war”. It refers to preparing to compete using familiar techniques, against competitors you’ve faced before, in the same markets or industries, only to discover that the rules have changed. Modern business competition is changing rapidly, and to compete effectively, you need to understand the skills that are required to win.
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For the last few decades, most companies have met their competition in a head to head, feature to feature battle that creates a significant amount of “me too” products with little differentiation other than price. This lack of differentiation leads to commoditization. In these market battles everyone eventually loses, because quality, customer service, and margins fall.
The feature to feature competition is called “attrition”, and it’s adopted from the military, where the goal is to overwhelm and defeat a competitor, regardless of the cost. But attrition relies on size, deep pockets, and slowly evolving markets in order to succeed. Increasingly, that’s not the competitive landscape most companies are facing.
Instead, what we see now is a demand for more speed, more agility, more innovation, because the competitive landscape is shifting. This maneuver strategy seeks to win by building competitive insights, taking valuable positions before competitors recognize them, and attacking competitors in areas of recognized weakness. Maneuver seeks to win the most at the least possible cost, understanding that slow and steady no longer wins the race.