Bury the Competition: The Competitive Analysis

Bury the Competition: The Competitive Analysis

“Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.”

-Jack Welsh

Of the three pillars for a successful business strategy, competition is the most dynamic. Identifying competition and completing a competitive analysis is paramount to create a competitive strategy. The process of competitive analysis is constantly required as economics, industries, customers, competition, products and every other factor is constantly in motion, changing. The goal of competitive analysis is to gain enough customer insight to create a value proposition greater than that of the competition, as viewed by the customers.

Creating That Golden Moment - Value Driven Work

Creating That Golden Moment - Meaning and Value Driven Work

Your career is in a natural state of entropy.

In following the second law of thermodynamics, entropy (the measure of randomness) will never decrease as the number of variables continuously increase over time. With the constant expansion of variability, a sense of meaning can also be lost. This loss of meaning in your work may cause you to only go through the motions at work, while avoiding any negative repercussions. Your job may seem like an endless stream of meaningless busywork which is constantly multiplying and being thrust upon you. Worst of all, you may feel trapped in your job for whatever reason. This may be the case for you, or your employees. Fortunately, through specific actions you can remediate the situation to reengage yourself or your employees.

Steps for Accepting New Innovation

Steps for Accepting New Innovation

When advancing and testing the boundaries of innovation, one must begin by looking back at the history to avoid the same mistakes and implement the fundamental basics. In reviewing Everett Roger’s 1962 book, “Diffusion of Innovation,” I came across his five stages of accepting a new innovation: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Upon adoption of the innovation, communication is spread in regards to the innovation. This communication is centralized around subjective perceptions of the innovation. The final communication is through the diffusion of the social system which sets the norms, change agents and the decisions of opinion leaders. Today’s innovation seeking acceptance is natural gas engines, which are just beginning the communications stage of its journey.