Renowned or Redundant? How Companies Can Outshine, Outmanoeuvre, and Outlast Their Competition

In an increasingly competitive environment where customers have more access and more choice, it becomes even more critical to create a unique proposition that elevates a company from its competitors. The largest companies in the world have this — Apple positions itself as luxury tech; Tesla sets itself apart as the automobile newcomer with all the cutting-edge features; Amazon is known for its speedy delivery. But most executive teams do not have the luxury of being the market giant. Instead, they need to find ways to be renowned. But renowned for what?

The Path of Greatest Resistance: Competing to Be Better 

Do they pursue the path of being renowned for being better than the competition? Or do they want to avoid the competition? Or maybe they want to be unique to the competition?

Striving to be merely better than the competition often leads to the path of greatest resistance. It involves following established practices and attempting to surpass rivals in a head-to-head contest where the incumbent holds the upper hand — unless, of course, you are the incumbent.

A clear example of this is the wave of ridesharing apps that emerged after Uber’s launch. Globally, consumers now have a multitude of options, including Uber, Sidecar, Lyft, Didi, Ola, and many others, all offering similar propositions and vying to outdo one another. In such scenarios, and often when the strategy focuses solely on ‘being better’, businesses can fall into the trap of competing primarily on price — a strategy that is neither sustainable nor innovative.

Blue Ocean Thinking: Avoiding the Competition Entirely 

Avoiding the competition is the blue ocean strategy —finding new pockets of growth without competition — a viable option for most companies that have not yet been held back by deeply entrenched business models. This is a powerful strategy that has seen many businesses succeed.

Revolut is a fantastic example of avoidance strategy. Launched in 2015, the company has a global mission to change the way people bank — avoiding the traditional banking model of physical branches, bureaucracy, and paperwork, and enabling its customers to spend, save, invest, and borrow money (and more) ‘in just a few taps’ via its mobile app.

Shifting the Value Proposition: The Power of Being Unique 

Being unique is something else entirely. It is the blue ocean strategy but more. It is about changing — rather, creating—the value proposition. The classic example is Netflix, which overhauled the traditional video rental model and replaced it with streaming. Or Apple, when it created the iPad. I recall many years ago receiving the first iPad as a birthday gift from my wife, and my immediate reaction was, ‘What do I need this for? I’m not going to use it.’ And yet it has become, for me and many others, both a leisure and productivity device that I touch every single day. Apple created for me a need I never knew I had.

Similarly, The Trade Desk is upending the advertising world — it has created a digital platform for advertisers to buy advertising space from those that want to sell advertising space. It has benefited from the digitalisation of advertising and the shift from analogue TV to digital-connected TV. Same again when Microsoft shifted its Microsoft Office suite from a one-off licence to an ongoing software-as-a-service offering.

The Acid Test 

These are examples of how executive teams have shifted their value proposition and become unique. The same approach can (and should) be applied to the entire persona of a company — the conglomeration of how it presents itself to the world, what it sells, and how it conducts its business. Being unique, in every sense, is core to attracting a radical base. And there is a very simple question to ask (which can be answered through observation, and, measures whether uniqueness has been achieved): How easy is it for competitors to replicate the offering of the business?

Edited extract from The Founder Effect (Wiley) by Lawrence Lam, which explores the essential traits of successful executive teams and governance structures that drive sustainable growth.
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