The great problem with creating many wonderful ideas for
improving competitive position is that many will have a
hard time choosing among them. Pick wrong, and you may miss
an opportunity to create a gigantic success.
Here is where looking for the best always-win, no-lose
options makes a difference. Let's consider the Disney theme
park business.
Disney could probably find a large number of potential
partners to develop many new services. If the partners
would pay for all of the development and the initial
implementation of the services as well as the time of
Disney employees working on the tasks, Disney could go
after a large number of alternatives. Not wanting to
inundate its customers with new services, the company could
then simply pick those that did best in tests.
Partners would probably be willing to go along with this
way of working with Disney as long as the partners felt
that they had a good chance of succeeding.
How hard would it be to fund an Internet start-up that had
a development contract with Disney? The experience of Pixar
in providing animation for Disney movies suggests that this
would be easy to do.
What if you do not have the appeal of Disney? How can you
find always-win, no lose options?
Partners will usually not be willing to fund your
development and start-up costs, but you can certainly
emphasize projects where those costs will be quite small.
Once you find many low-cost projects, you can then evaluate
them for how hard it would be to recover your expenses.
Some will pay off in a few days, others in decades. Go for
those with the fastest benefits. You should still have a
long list at this point.
Now compare the choices for the size of the long-term
benefit, net of any on-going costs you will have.
Here are some categories that should emerge. Anything that
builds the recognition of and reputation for your
enterprise should be near the top.
This means that existing customers are more attracted
(making them easier to retain), plus you get new customers.
Anything that enhances your proprietary advantages in
knowledge about your customers should also be attractive.
Eventually, marketing, products, and service will be
totally unique to each customer. But you cannot create the
right individual solution that unless you know what is
uniquely attractive and useful to the customer.
A third category is where the customer can provide the
service they want better for themselves and at lower cost
to both of you than you can provide it to them. An example
is the tracking of packages by overnight delivery
companies. You can usually get the information faster,
better, and cheaper on the Web site than by calling the
toll-free line. You will probably think of better ideas.
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
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