Here’s my third follow up entry to my “Built to Collapse” post in which I look at the parallels between society and business collapse – inspired by Jared Diamond’s “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”.
The third parallel – Hostile Neighbors – is on the surface the most straightforward from a business perspective. Whereas for societies it’s not a given that your neighbors will be hostile, for businesses your neighbors in a commercial sense are your competitors, who essentially by definition are hostile.
But perhaps this warrants further consideration. Turning the proposition around we essentially have the idea that societies that succeeded were those that avoided major or extended hostilities with their neighbors. Hence the question is how can businesses avoid major hostilities with their competitors?
I think there are two potential avenues to pursue (if we ignore the option of forming a cartel!). The first is to identify limited ways in which competitors can legally work together to promote the growth of their industry, products and services. Whether through industry associations (for example the GSM Association in the mobile industry) or through awareness raising campaigns competitors may be able to grow the overall pie while aggressively fighting each other for the largest slice.
The second and perhaps most attractive avenue is to differentiate your product/service and/or target your offering in a very focused way to specific customer segments in ways that essentially remove your competitor from the picture. An activity we call innovation!
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