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How would you react if you were forced into a commoditised positioning? Check out these car rental companies and what happens to them at airports around the world for just a taste. So how to react? From a business standpoint, if ‘Thrifty’ really means ‘we are the cheapest’ – then make your signage black and white and put up a brightly coloured sign saying ‘We will beat any price from these guys… Read More
It’s the end of the first Batman movie from 1989 and Batman is fighting his nemesis, the Joker. Batman says, “I’m going to kill you!” The Joker says, “You IDIOT! You made me.” So it plays out in real life too. We make our own competition. From whom do you think the low cost airlines bought their used airplanes? Wasn’t Kodak a pioneer of digital photography? From where do the generic drug… Read More
There may be no better competitive advantage in business than to be able to offer a valuable solution for free for which a rival must receive remuneration to stay in business. The idea follows the line of the business axiom to give away the razors (a durable) for free so that people buy the razor blades (a consumable). It’s a dynamic that, for another illustration, means that there really cannot be a… Read More
Is there a difference between ‘best practice’ in theory as against the real world? Should there be? In the many years I have taught patent strategy, I have often seen people make a mental distinction between sound strategic theory and what people can actually do in practice. I learned about this distinction as a general principle – the so called right way and real way – early in my professional career when… Read More
Here are some reasons to give it all away, what would you add? 1 – you’re giving away some carefully selected IP to build a market 2 – based on hard data you are 100% sure that you don’t need it 3 – you know for certain that your market moves too fast and the IP you’re giving away today is already obsolete 4 – you’ve done the sums and the IP… Read More
One of the first rules of creating a winning strategy is to see things as they are and not as we believe them to be. Strategy is not forgiving of misinterpretations about the way things are. For example, if everyone believes that Microsoft is inhibiting innovation in an area when in fact the company is fostering innovation, that misinterpretation will not change the reality. To illustrate, open source thrives in the presence… Read More
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