Strategy in Three Minutes. Episode 23

1. Strategy and Value Exchange: How to Break Free from the Competitive Mindset

Those with a competitive mindset create good businesses. Those with a creative mindset build the best.

My friend’s kids fell in love with reading thanks to J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter.

Steven King has written more than 65 novels.

Rowling, King, and many other great writers didn’t have to ‘disrupt’ William Shakespeare or Stephany Meyer to achieve their success.

They didn’t disrupt or compete – they created.

Apple created the mobile app market when it had no one to compete with.

First budget airlines didn’t compete with regular ones, they created their own customers.

Many believe that a market is like a continent: divided into ‘countries,’ with ‘wars’ needed to reshape the borders.

This is an example of the competitive mindset.

The best leaders don’t want to move borders, they create their own ‘countries.’

Leaders with a competitive mindset:

[1] Analyze the markets

[2] Look for unsatisfied customers and unmet needs

[3] Create products that meet customer needs better than the current ones

Leaders with a creative mindset:

[1] Analyze both customers and non-customers

[2] Dive deeply into customer needs

[3] Create solutions that meet these needs in a radically simpler, cheaper, faster, or more convenient way.

What do you think? Do you embrace the creative mindset, or do you lean toward the competitive one?

2. Strategy-related terms: Know your customers – as well as your non-customers, DIY customers, and even anti-customers.

Image source: Dall-E 3

There are a few groups of customers and prospects for any product.

[1] Your loyal customers

[2] Indifferent customers – they buy your product out of habit.

[3] Your competitors’ customers – they buy a similar product but under a different brand.

[4] DIY customers – they solve the same tasks as your customers or your competitors’ customers but do this on their own.

[5] Consumers of substitute products.

[6] Unaware prospects – they have the same needs as your customers but don’t realize it.

[7] Unrealized need customers – they have specific needs no product currently meets.

[8] Anti-customers – they’ve made a deliberate decision not to buy your products or those of your rivals.

Note: these groups may overlap.

If you want to ignite a new market, you need to know all of them.

What do you think? Do you research those who don’t buy your products on a regular basis?

3. Trend of the week: The Unforeseen Consequence of COVID

Few things highlight the imperfection of our mind more than our inability to predict the future.

A few days ago, I was sorting out old files on my computer and came across a file I created in 2020 with links to some newspaper articles from the time.

Many of them contained bold predictions like “we’ll never get back to the office” or “retail is dead.”

None of these predictions came true.

COVID has changed our lives to a lesser degree than we thought then.

But the only thing that appeared in 2021 and has endured is that we value our time more than before.

TRAJECTORY’s report shows that many people in the UK (and I’m sure the same applies to other parts of the world) still want to use their time more rationally.

Picture source: Trajectory

COVID reduced the amount of importance they place on their work.

We want more time to live.

We need to take this into account in our strategies.

These people are our customers and employees.

Maybe it’s a perfect moment to ignite a new market?

What do you think? Did COVID reduce the amount of importance you place on your work?

Does your strategy reflect this trend? Share your thoughts in the comments.


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Read also: Don’t Buy the Present by Paying With Your Future

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Check out my book, Red and Yellow Strategies: Flip Your Strategic Thinking and Overcome Short-termism