In a globalized world and where the entrepreneurial spirit is increasingly present among people, competing has become a paradigm that, however, can confuse many companies in their business strategy.
What happens is that the word competition or competitiveness It always refers us to buying from someone, to winning the race against the other or to conquering the markets that our competition (the word is precise) has.
Mistakes with competitiveness
However, here are some mistakes; For example, one could be competing with a company that is artificially sustained and not in the capacity of its products, see for example a company that launders assets of illicit origin; We could also be competing with a company that has focused its growth poorly and we would be comparing ourselves with an organization that does not help us to really know our standards.
Finally, we could be competing with an organization that suddenly decides to pivot quickly in the market and focus on other niches or in other products and services so that their comparison would not help us much.
Competitiveness data of a company
As economic classics such as Joseph Schumpeter understood, market disruption It occurs with innovative companies and with different products or services that few saw appear, until they completely transformed it.
Examples of this are Netflix (which disappeared the video rental market), Uber (which affected the market for rental taxi chains), among others. In this sense, competitiveness must actually be done against one's own standards.
The best example What comes to mind is that of a highly competitive athlete in the 100 meter dash. He will train seeking to improve his physique, performance and against his own time; He will not try to train by running alongside other athletes or by turning to the side to see who is catching up with him, since this will ultimately make him lose time and lower his mark. The same should happen with companies;
Companies should compete with themselves, with their own standards, with their own forms of innovation and, above all, with the service they give to their clients.
It is these standards and these internal measures that should give us the competitiveness data of a company.
Inside the organization
But also, curiously, this must move within the organization; In them the teams should not compete with each other, nor should the people within them.
Many organizations promote this spirit of internal competition, without realizing that what they are doing is undermining the spirit of collaboration that every team and every organization needs to, precisely, be better.
According to this, we could almost venture to say that we must (i) be very clear about this different form of competitiveness; or, (ii) replace it, rather, with a spirit of permanent innovation in companies. It is innovation that makes a company truly competitive;
- When a restaurant owner simply decides to lower his prices compared to his competition, he is competing with the worst strategy, which is to reduce his margins.
- When the restaurant owner himself decides to introduce new dishes to the menu or try different combinations, he is competing through innovation, precisely what has always achieved better products, better services and leading companies in the markets.
Therefore, it is very important that you in your organization begin to banish classic competition and begin to encourage the cooperation of collaborators for innovation.
It will be on this cooperative innovation that the success of your business and its sustainability in the long term will be based, I assure you..
