What is the really important way to develop a superior product that you must not compete in order to win the competition?
Many people try to achieve 'beyond their rivals' by extending their school learning methods, but what is important in real world competition is 'getting a completely different position from rivals.' Mr. Linda, who works for a startup with a market value of 1 billion dollars (about 110 billion yen), says the importance of 'not competing head-on'.
Why it's better to be the anti-status quo-Product Lessons
Many learn 'competing' through school studies. You need to remember more textbook answers in order to perform better than your peers while you study with your classmates.
When such competition is applied to the real world, in order to win the competitive company, observe the behavior of the rival and analyze the strategy, and 'add a new function to the product' 'mimic the rival' 'price You will have to make a selection such as “lower”.
However, if you apply the method of competition learned as a student to competition in the real world as it is, there is a weak point that 'the idea is limited to a limited range'.
There are also benefits to head-on competition. By competition, people can take action without self-satisfaction. For beginners, learning through competition is an efficient way to level up. However, Linda says that when you try to get out of the beginner's level and do something meaningful, you need to get out of 'imitation of others' and deepen yourself.
There is also the real problem that, as long as you're mimicking an already successful rival, it's very hard to beat that rival. In many cases, persuading the consumer to believe that “your product is better” with “the rival product is the best” is a daunting task. People don't want to admit that their ideas are wrong and don't react to small improvements, so they have to make products that are more than 10 times better in order to persuade them.
Linda says it is important to 'observe the current situation and move in a completely different direction' to escape from this path. If your rivals boast of 'speed,' you need to make another story of 'simplicity.' At this time, the following three are important for positioning your product.
· Be in the only position where you can do it
・It is very difficult for rivals to react
・Resolving problems that are overlooked
Linda likens the competition between people and companies that make products to the battle between David and Goliath . In this story, when the shepherd David fights Goliath, a powerful giant with a sword and a spear, he wins with a stone thrown from a stone thrower on his forehead, and a weak person beats a mighty person. Used as a parable of upset. David did not compete with Goliath in strength and size, and won by 'redefining the rules of battle'. Linda says that such a battle is a modern battle.
A real-world example is Shopify , Amazon's counter horse. It is Amazon that controls e-commerce, but it is said that Shopify's power is increasing in recent years, and Linda says that Shopify is a 'genius of positioning'.
``Shopify'', which is also called the key to overthrow Amazon, allows employees to work from home even after the new Corona-GIGAZINE
Amazon is called an aggregator and benefits from removing diversity from the brand and consolidating it all under the 'Amazon' brand. Shopify, on the other hand, emphasizes diversity and provides tools to entrepreneurs who want to establish their own distribution channels. This makes it impossible for Amazon to mimic Shopify.
In addition, the prosperity of Amazon has hit big physical bookstores hard, while independent bookstores have grown their share significantly in the United States.
Independent bookstores were reviving behind Amazon's prosperity-GIGAZINE
This is because Amazon has lost the role of a large bookstore by 'providing an infinite number of bookshelves', while a local independent bookstore has established a role as a community and provides a completely different experience from Amazon. Because I started to do it. These bookstores have a unique, non-uniform product lineup, and many are anti-Amazon.
I went to ``The Last Bookstore'', a new generation independent bookstore selected as ``the most beautiful bookstore in the world''-GIGAZINE
In this way, the products provided are more valuable the further away they are from the huge brands that have already been established.
In addition, resolving “overlooked but problematic” can show people unprecedented value. If no one is working on it, many people will appreciate it, even if there are mistakes, because 'having a solution' itself is good.
Of course, you can win the competition by 'making it 10 times better', just as Google created a product that is 10 times better than previous search engines, but the world is full of the battle between David and Goliath, Linda said that many rewarding roads are not due to head-to-head competition, but by the stone-casting method of David.
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in Note, Posted by darkhorse_log