"I had a farm in Africa". With these six words begins the mythical novel later popularized on the big screen with the name ofOut of Africa, a book that tells the story of 17 years on a coffee plantation, set in the last years of the British Victorian Empire. And that in the cinema left us unforgettable scenes full of bucolic landscapes, large desert expanses and two interpreters of height as Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, perhaps in one of the roles of maximum splendor of both actors.
Who hasn't dreamed of starting a startup as if they were on this peculiar farm? That is to say: with a vast, almost virgin terrain ahead of you, with no competition other than your own skills, and knowing (or imagining) that all you have to do to succeed is to conquer a market. For such dreams are at the root of many of today's business failures: if the ocean is as blue as it seems, the product may not have that much of a market; if there are no sharks lurking in your sea, ask yourself if it's because they know there's nowhere to get their teeth into, and not just because you've been smarter, more original, bolder and quicker than anyone else.
On the blog of one of the most powerful integrated marketing tools on the market (Hubspot), we found this week an incisive (because of the sharks) reflection on competitive intelligence understood as market advantage, which points out precisely that so hackneyed error of some entrepreneurs of our time. "Markets devoid of competitors are rare: if a product is worth making, the market around it will not remain empty for long. If it does, the product is probably not worth making."
When it comes to thinking about competitors, erring on the side of excess can be just as damaging as erring on the side of defect. In the first case, Justin Lee (writer of the post and head of GrowthBot at the company), gives us the example of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola: they were so focused on competing with each other that they could not or did not know how to see the emergence of a brand like Redbull, which today surpasses them both in terms of popularity as a soft drink. In the second case, he draws on a personal experience of getting lost on a snowy mountain: if you don't have a market... What's the point of being alone?
Between the two extremes, the right option is to learn to evaluate competitors precisely for their greatest value: the information they provide. It's the way to see them as resources, not a "nuisance," and also to ward off the danger that Buffer (a popular social media management tool) CEO Joel Gascoigne defines as, "The real problem startups have is that most people don't know about them." Competition, Lee continues, can help illuminate the market, which is sometimes more useful than if you were on your own, and he provides more examples: "Would Nike still be the king of sportswear without Adidas on their heels? What would Steve Jobs' legacy be without Bill Gates? Would Salesforce's boom be as big if it wasn't driven by Oracle?
The peripheral vision to take advantage of competitive intelligence and turn it into a market advantage involves three "basic" steps, but which are often not used properly: collecting data, analyzing it and interpreting the results. This is something in which programming (which is precisely what companies like Hubspot do for a living) can provide a more effective and optimized performance. But beyond the (inevitable and legitimate) "commercial" message of the post, let's look at what is being proposed as a disruptive economic scenario: competition stimulates, induces and even serves as an environment for growth. This is the leap that more and more companies are making from a scenario of pure competition to one of "coopetence": two or more companies that live from the same market, but are able to complement each other to get more out of it than if they were operating separately.
This recommended reading concludes with some considerations that we cannot resist quoting and making our own: "It is not a question of an unhealthy obsession with our competitors. But neither is it about excluding those around us to create the mirage of an empty landscape. It' s about curiosity, open-mindedness, willingness to learn from others. And with the help of today's artificial intelligence, competitive intelligence can become a competitive advantage."
