This is a cross-reference with Doctrine. If you have not yet mastered user (or wider stakeholder) management and do not understand their needs, this is one of the first things to address.

Useful resources:

• Alchemy - a book covering basics of marketing, which covers user needs

• The Gervais Principle - a tongue in cheek analysis of human needs in a corporate environment.

The bigger the organization, the more important it is to understand what is exactly going on. Talking to different departments usually reveals the complexity of the situation and many hidden needs that create an impression of irrationality.

Many organizations often repeat the same tasks, such as risk management. This increases overall spending and leads to many half-baked solutions, none of which are as effective as they should be.

On the other hand, one must be aware that premature centralization can lead to shadow IT. Therefore, instead of blindly following this approach, it is advised to seek a balance that works.

It is extremely difficult to stay up to date in organizations where everyone talks to everyone. This applies to cross- and internal team communication.

Building small teams around capabilities capable of doing what is needed is essential here.

Team topologies takes this aspect of strategy to the next level.

This is another strategic play that taps into Doctrine. It covers improving the overall efficiency of the organization, especially through:

• removing bottlenecks - by automating repetitive tasks, streamlining processes or outsourcing non-core activities

• improving coordination and communication

• focusing on user needs (yes, this is so important it is mentioned again)

• continous improvement

You can buy many products from both a producer's website and from distributors. The producer may not intend to fully operate and promote their own e-commerce, but having a competitive potential is a useful argument in negotiations with distributors, and gives the producer an upper hand.

People naturally resist change, especially when they have invested time and resources in older methods of achieve their goals. Even if your product is superior, potential customers might stick with the inferior option for a considerable time if the consider the learning curve or migration cost too high.

To overcome this resistance, it is important to educate them on why your solution is better, why it belongs to the future and why sticking to the previous option is not good for them.

In corporate environment, you might educate your stakeholders about the nature of this resistance - so they could evaluate the situation in a favourable way.

Some people would consider this to be a part of brand and marketing gameplay.

This is exactly what you think it is: reach your target customers with the right message. This gameplay was removed in the process of refining mapping - as it overlaps with others.

Have you ever tried to understand your bank's terms and conditions? There are so many things in there that many people do not bother reading it. Similarly, software terms and conditions work in the same way.

If you are making your product more expensive or worse, you can hide it if you are introducing a whole batch of changes. Sure, it can cause backslash - but if done properly - few people will notice.

Examples:

• A bank simplifies terms of service - and throws in a set of small fees.

• Politicians complicating taxes - and raising them at the same time. ("We know you like low taxes - so we have got plenty of them for you").

Fear is a powerful emotion that can drive users to behave in a certain way and discourage them from taking certain actions.

Examples:

• Consider the message, "Nobody got fired for buying X," where X represents a well-known, albeit costly, established product. This statement subtly implies a threat: choosing an alternative could put your job at risk.

• Likewise, the message "Using non-original ink may damage your printer or accelerate its wear," though accurate, is intended to instill fear in users, discouraging them from purchasing cheaper replacement inks.

Needs are never artificial, but it might be possible to satisfy them through marketing messaging. Usually, the need for high status is exploited in that way.

Two separate brands addressing the same market segment with slightly different products competing "fiercely" make it difficult for anyone else to enter the market.

Example:

• Large grocery stores that change prices daily and issue coupons. Ordinary consumers have no reasonable means of comparing an overall price for what they need.

• Airlines having cheap tickets but expensive "optional" services, again making comparison of real travel costs difficult.

Nothing to be added. If you are in a position to use any approaches that will favour you, do it.

You focus on services that encourage competition, such as common platforms, physical delivery mechanisms, and comparators. This approach builds market awareness and highlights competitors to organizations, fostering competition and accelerating the evolution of specific capabilities.

This is the 'small part of a big pie' strategy. By sharing some of your competitive advantages with others and allowing them to compete with you, you collectively build substantial market awareness. With appropriate licensing, you can also benefit from any innovations they develop.

Look at the mapping itself. It is spreading because it is open.

Look at any review system. The more users adds review, the more valuable is the system.

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States tend to intervene in the market when they identify opportunities or threats that the free market cannot adequately address. For example, through a system of grants, China encouraged the growth of electromobility.

Using this form of play requires a lot of connections in advisory bodies that influence government.

Look at oil. When the price falls, OPEC countries limit supply.

The threat of litigation might make your competitors reluctant to move to your market. Trademarks/Patents/Trade secrets - everything can be useful.

This is seen frequently at a state level and is called 'sanctions'.

Regulations can also create constraints - for example, restricting areas where you can build houeses will make house prices skyrocket.

Some companies with strong brands also use limited series to increase the value of their products.

Look at banking.

The more regulations is there in the banking sector, the more difficult is to create a new bank.

So it is in the interests of banks to make regulations as complicated as possible.

This means accepting sunk costs and admitting earlier strategic mistake. People usually try to use softer approaches - like starving a particular business line.

This is a typical spiral of mergers and acquisitions. Two shrinking businesses merge, seek synergy by firing duplicated managers, fire more people, loose the ability to deliver, their profit shrinks, so they seek a new merger candidate.

Buyers do not understand what they are buying.

Examples:

• UK after Brexit wanted to create their own navigation system. They invested in a company OneWeb, which had promising broadband satellites. It turned out those satellites are not fit for navigation.

• An oil company, seeking to diversify their business and prepare for green economy, decided to buy a plastic bag producing business. Which were then, as expected, banned in EU.

Standard marketing trick.

If you lower the cost of entry to a particular market, you can expect many new players will enter it, which will cause fragmentation. This can be the first step towards Harvesting or ILC.

If you own a critical constraint, you can dictate pricing to your vendors and customers.

If some of your customers are successful, you might want to start competing with them. It has risks

Heavy investment in a de facto standard that competition is not using might lock your customers and force your competitors to adapt.

It can also spectacularly backfire.

Sometimes, this can get you in jail - if you use creative accounting.

But organizations tend to do all sorts of trick to create an impression of a thriving business.

If a start up is threatening your business, buy them, then close them.

Think what Amazon did with cloud - offering that many services means that unless you can match the investment - you can exist only in niches.

Wait until the uncertainty is removed from the market and it is obvious what to do.

You might need to pay attention to IP though.

This is a priviledge of a few big companies.

This is a private capital version of directed government investment. If you believe the market is moving in a particular direction and it is in your interest to accelerate that movement, you might want to create a contest or invest money in startups that align with that trend.

Some of them might be successful - but it does not matter which, because you always win.

Example: Microsoft (MSFT) invested in AI research. It does not matter which AI company will dominate as long as they create demand for computing resources. Naturally, investing in the right AI company is the cherry on top.

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It is good to have access to brilliant people.

Organize a place where they will be able to collaborate and exchange ideas - meetups, conferences, discord chats. Help them grow - and hire them when you need.

If a company has a strong negotiating position over you because it controls a key constraint, such as parts or sales channels, you may need to undermine their position by removing their barriers to entry. This will make it easier for others to compete with them and weaken their power.

Many businesses can't recognize what is protecting their market.

For example, banks typically do not like regulations. They consider them excessive, expensive, and painful. However, those regulations make it difficult to open new banks, thereby protecting the position of existing banks.

If you convince a bank to invest in regulatory simplification (through f.e. creating compliance-oriented solutions), their pain diminishes, and so does their market protection.

Your position as a compliance-oriented solution provider improves a lot.

If you have a more advanced base capability, you can replicate any additional features they invent. The more they try to differentiate, the harder it will be for them to catch up with you, as their entire stack will be based on an outdated approach.

Check Simon's old article (CC-BY-SA) below:

Notes on map.

• A[1] to A[2] represents the change of an activity from product to utility. Let us suppose our business has established around selling a product A[1]  whilst the new entrant has introduced the more industrialised form A[2]. As per normal there is inertia to the change caused by changing practices, business models and capital (knowledge, social etc).

• The competitor is running an ILC model around A[2] and hence it is building an ecosystem. Along with efficiency benefits this will enable them to accurately identify (through consumption data) future successful changes such as C[1] and then industrialise such changes to additional components (e.g. C[2]). An ILC model will cause the competitor's innovation rate, efficiency and customer focus to increase simultaneously with the size of the ecosystem.

• There is an emerging market which is less advanced in terms of provision of the activity, hence we could sell A[1] to the emerging market. However, this won't deal with the issue that A[1] is going to be replaced with the more evolved form of A[2]. Concentrating on the emerging market will simply lay the groundwork for the competitor to enter that emerging market.

• We could try to recreate past profitability around A[1] through cost cutting but again this doesn't deal with the issue that A[1] is going to be replaced with the more evolved form of A[2]. All that cost cutting is likely to do is create a spiral of death for us.   

• We could attempt to 'innovate' by trying to create a high risk and uncertain differential B[1] or by  acquiring a company that provides this. However the competitor can simply copy us and then aim to provide it in a more industrialised form B[2]. This is particularly dangerous as part of a tower and moat play.  

• So what is the tower and moat? A cunning competitor will try to build a tower of revenue around A[2] and build a moat devoid of any and all potential differentials (e.g. B[2] and C[2]) that surrounds it.  Every time we try to 'innovate' (e.g. B[1]) whether through acquisition or our own efforts, then the competitor will industrialise the act and provide it for free.  The danger to us of this play is that as their ecosystem grows they exploit both it and our own efforts to bolster their moat. Once we eventually realise that the future is not A[1] or trying to sell A[1] to emerging markets but instead it's about competing around A[2] then our problem becomes that the competitor has a large ecosystem around its core revenue and there is little to no room left to differentiate. It's basically game over for us.

src: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/07/tower-and-moat.html