The document provides 8 new ways for businesses to compete in a changing environment: 1. Allow competitors to benefit from your strengths by selling your products under their brand. 2. Compete with yourself by offering multiple brands to target different customer segments. 3. Invite future competitors like startups to join your business through incubation or investment. 4. Create competitive startups within your own company to stay ahead of changes. 5. Lock in customers by making them part of your business processes through crowdsourcing. 6. Compete in the virtual world of social media, augmented reality, and virtual worlds. 7. Constantly reinvent your business through agility and adapting

1. 8 new ways to compete
in the new normal
frederic de meyer
founder
frederic@i4fi.com
www.i4fi.com
www.fredericdemeyer.com
@fdemeyer

2. are you still competing as if you lived in the
old world?
then consider these ideas…

3. 1. let competitors benefit from your
strengths
On Amazon marketplace you
will often find (new) products at
a substantially lower price
compared to Amazon’s.
Cannibalization? Probably, even
if Amazon gets a commission
on each transaction. On the
other hand, this move has
probably limited the number of
emerging copycats of Amazon’s
business !

4. 2. sell your products to your competitors,
and let them sell it under their brand…
If your market is declining you
might as well sell directly to
your competitors… Peugeot’s
Expert vans will be sold as
Toyotas as from mid 2013,
competing with the same van…
of Peugeot !

5. 3. why not compete with yourself?
Admittedly, ‘multibranding’ is
anything but new. Procter &
Gamble has used this technique
for years. But what if it was
applied to other industries?
Telecom operator KPN, for
instance, offers mobile services
through 5 different brands on
the Dutch market. No doubt this
comes at an additional cost.
That’s okay just as long as you
get a bigger piece of the pie…
(no guarantee though)

6. 4. you can invite your future competitors to
join you!
Most businesses will face
competition from new business
models developed by startups…
so why wouldn’t you embrace
them, by serving as an
incubator (the cheap way) or
invest in them in very early
stage (the risky way)?

7. 5. or you could create competitive startups
within your own company!
‘Build, measure, learn’ the start-
up way, but from within your
company… well, why not? You’ll
have loads of trouble changing
the culture and letting your
employees do the craziest
things (like crowdsourcing their
ideas), but at least you’ll stay
ahead of the game… and of
potential competitors…

8. 6. lock in customers by making them part of
your business process
New business tools such as
crowdsourcing and open
innovation can be used as a
competitive differentiator. Why?
Well, aren’t customers more
likely to stay loyal to the brand
whose innovations they
contribute to? Or, in case of GE’s
Ecomagination initiative: aren’t
the persons who contributed to
the ideas the most likely early
adopters of the ideas?

9. 7. you will need to compete in the virtual
world as well…
You will need get used to the
fact that your customers are
decreasingly influenced by the
‘real world’. The true
competitive battleground is
moving to social media,
augmented reality, gamification,
virtual currencies and indeed
virtual worlds.

10. 8. one way or another, you will have to
constantly reinvent yourself…
In virtually every industry, agility
will be key to strengthen your
competitive position. Most likely
you will need to adapt your
organizational model (and your
culture, processes, employee
profiles, etc) in order to become
and remain agile. Easier said
than done, but vital
nevertheless…
Source: agile2lean.blogspot.be

11. How do you compare to your competitors?
Order a competitive benchmark report by i4fi
• a neutral assessment of your company’s
performance on 25 metrics,
benchmarked with 5 competitors;
• your industry’s best practices and how
you measure up against them;
• obtain new ideas to improve your
business and your competitiveness.
• assessment based on publicly available information; Ask for a quote now !
• contains multiple links to research sources;
• List of benchmarking metrics varies by industry; frederic@i4fi.com
• final PPT report available 15 working days after project launch. (+)32 478 68 13 08