Read this article from the Financial Times and answer the Questions.

Obsession with the competition

Level of difficulty: ●●●

Before you read

If you're in a job:

Who are your company's main competitors? Do you know their

Products and services very well? How are they different from

Yours?

If you're a student:

Which educational institutions are similar to yours and 'compete' for the same students? In what ways do these institutions differ?

Reading

Read this article from the Financial Times and answer the Questions.

Do not waste time and energy trying to beat your competitors

By W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

w

e have looked at a number fof factors that are often thought to be related to a company's potential to achieve

₅ high growth. We asked, for example, is high growth a function of young managers? Of being a small entrepreneurial upstart? Of big financial

₁₀ investments in the latest technologies? Of operating in a favourable competitive or industry environment? No systematic differences were

₁₅ spotted along any of these lines.

But what we did find was a

fundamental difference in the way

companies approached strategy.

When, for example, Callaway

₂₀ Golf, the US golf club manufacturer, launched its 'Big Bertha' golf club, it rapidly rose to dominate the market. This was not because Callaway had no

₂₅ competitors - in fact, it had long-

standing ones. But the golf clubs of all the main manufacturers looked alike and were out of line with what players wanted: a golf

₃₀ club with a larger head that made playing more rewarding and fun. Callaway broke away from the pack with Big Bertha and earned high growth in revenues and

₃₅ profits. The competition, by

contrast, so focused on one

another, failed both to perceive

and act on this opportunity.

High-growth companies in our

₄₀ study paid little attention to matching or beating the competition. Instead, they sought to make the competition irrelevant by offering buyers a

₄₅ quantum leap in value. The question they posed was not what would it take to be better than the competition, but what would it take to win the mass of buyers

₅₀ even without marketing? The

drive for this type of innovation pushes these companies to question everything an industry and competitors are doing,

₅₅ opening their eyes to the differences between what companies are competing on and what buyers actually value. This is not only the route to high

₆₀ creativity, but to tremendous cost savings. Just think of home products retailer Ikea; Direct Line Insurance; Home Depot, the US Do-it-yourself and home

₆₅ improvement retailer; news organisations CNN and Bloomberg, or Starbucks, the US coffee shops chain. The innovative ideas fuelling these companies'

₇₀ highly profitable growth are not the result of aiming to build advantages over the competition. They are the result of a drive to offer superior value to buyers.

From the Financial Times

1 Match 1-7 with a-g to form expressions from lines 1-18.

3 4 5 6

entrepreneurial favourable financial fundamental high latest young

a) difference

b) growth

c) environment

d) investments

e) managers

f) upstart

g) technologies

2 Look at the second paragraph and choose the right
alternative.

a) Callaway's new club succeeded

i) slowly.

ii) in an average length of time.

iii) very quickly.

b) Callaway had

i) no competitors.

ii) the same competitors for a long time.

iii) a lot of new competitors.

c) The competitors' clubs looked

i) the same as each other.

ii) different from each other but were really the same, iii) different from each other and were really different from each other.

d) Players wanted a club with a head that was

i) bigger, ii) cheaper, iii) lighter.

e) 'Callaway broke away from the pack" means that it

i) continued to have the same success as its

competitors.

ii) went bankrupt.

iii) became much more successful than its competitors.

f) Callaway's competitors

i) knew what they should do.

ii) reacted immediately.

iii) did not react.

3 Look at the last paragraph and say if these statements
about high growth companies are true or false, according
to the study.

High growth companies

a) pay a lot of attention to every move their competitors
make.

b) offer something completely new.

c) do a lot of marketing.

d) don't care about their buyers.

e) are more creative and have lower costs.

f) specifically aim to build advantages over the
competition.

Over to you 1

What was revolutionary about the things below? How did they emerge? What did they replace, if anything, or were they completely new departures with no real competition?

• Starbucks'coffee

• Ikea

• CNN

• Amazon Books

• Walkman

• Ben & Jerry's ice cream

Over to you 2

Can you think of a product or service where there is something you would like to improve? Could this improvement be a strategic opening for someone? For example, if you play a sport, are you completely happy with your equipment? Is there an improvement you would like to make? Do you think there is a strategic opportunity here?

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14