A few things about competition.
- While you are trying to beat them, they are trying to beat you. Hence, judging the competition as static is a surefire way to agony.
- There are 2 ways to beat the competition. Beat them on their own game (likely an old game), or change the game.
- If you can beat it over a straight fight on their own game, by all means, do it. But don’t forget they likely upgrade their weaponry too. Just make sure yours is way better to make a killing.
- But if you can, why not change the game in your favor? Warfare with skills and treachery gains you more paparazzi admiration than just a pure bloodbath, right? And over course of human history, this proved to be more effective than pure straight-fight where victory isn’t guaranteed, as everyone is upgrading their armory at the same time.
- To change the game, you shift the focus to something even more critical/ better. For example, the feature phone is dead not because it is worse in call quality, as it can win in a straight fight any day. But call quality, anyone walks into Vodafone/ T-Mobile/ Telefonica/ Verizon asking for the best call quality phone nowadays?
- Technology edge could help in changing the game, but also, there are also other cards you can play. In today’s highly advanced products especially in consumer electronics, there are usually millions of features that go unnoticed. With your product, can you shift the focus to a great feature you have, and make people notice it over your competitors? Even in some extreme cases, a competitor just claims they have the “best” XYZ when everyone uses the same. However, they could claim that because no one else focuses on it! And I have seen it work many times! And this is not considered lying as the company could indeed be using the “best”, but it is just many other companies using the “best” as well.
- Another is to find a new use case using existing technology. And also could be some non-technology advancement that changes the game. For example, instead of going for tech innovation, it could be business innovation, like offering yearly hardware upgrades when no one else does it.
