Quotes About Competition

But this way of thinking about competition is too narrow. The real point of competition is not to beat your rivals. It's not about winning a sale. The point is to earn profits. Competing for profits is more complex. It's a struggle involving multiple players, not just rivals, over who will capture the value an industry creates.

These five forces—the intensity of rivalry among existing competitors, the bargaining power of buyers (the industry's customers), the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of substitutes, and the threat of new entrants—determine the industry's structure

The five forces framework zeroes in on the competition you face and gives you the baseline for measuring superior performance. It explains the industry's average prices and costs, and therefore the average industry profitability you are trying to beat. Before you can make sense of your own performance (current and potential), you need insight into the industry's fundamental economics.

Powerful buyers will force prices down or demand more value in the product, thus capturing more of the value for themselves.

Precisely because substitutes are not direct rivals, they often come from unexpected places. This makes substitutes difficult to anticipate or even to see once they appear. The threat of substitution is especially tricky when it comes at one remove.

disruptive technology will invalidate the assets of the current generation of industry leaders. Digital

According to company legend, here's how Southwest Airlines was born. Back in the late 1960s, "a couple of guys said, 'Here's an idea. Why don't we start an airline that charges just a few bucks and has lots of flights every day instead of what the other guys are doing—charging a lot of bucks and having just a few flights each day?

Entry barriers protect an industry from newcomers who would add new capacity.

Its low fares made flying an attractive alternative for price-sensitive travelers accustomed to driving or taking a bus. In the early years, a shareholder asked CEO Herb Kelleher if Southwest couldn't raise its prices by just a few dollars since its $15 price on the Dallas–San Antonio route was so much lower than Braniff's $62 fare. Kelleher said no, our real competition is ground transportation, not other airlines.

Blue Ocean Strategy

If rivalry is intense, companies compete away the value they create, passing it on

the second test of strategy is often overlooked because it is not intuitive at all. A distinctive value proposition, Porter explains, will not translate into a meaningful strategy unless the best set of activities to deliver it is different from the activities performed by rivals. His logic is simple and compelling: "If that were not the case, every competitor could meet those same needs, and there would be nothing unique or valuable about the positioning.

Sedona was thinking that watching a game when you already knew the final score must be a male thing

You won't get extra marks for being teacher's pet. You won't go to the top of the class. There is no class. There is no teacher. Or if there is then you have to understand that he or she doesn't actually like you. You are not being marked out of ten for how neatly you sharpen your pencil and how lovely your handwriting is. You are not going to get a gold star. You are not the fucking flower monitor and no one cares what you do.

She said that instead of conquering Everest, I could conquer the conqueror of Everest and while he had to go climb the mountain, I could stay home in lazy comfort listening to the radio and eating chocolates. She was upset, I suppose, but you can't imbibe someone's success by fucking them.

They only tackle you when you've got the ball.

She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments.

She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments. They fought about the exact color of the sky and which path they should take on a hunt. They disagreed passionately about whose fish was the best tasting. They could work up extreme hatred for each other at a moment's notice.

Mercy and weakness are the same thing in war, and there's no prize for nice behavior.

But I suppose I'm a typical nerd, good at the details, not very smart at seeing the larger picture. I'd gone in for the competition because I liked my science teacher, and it had been like doing any interesting piece of homework. I had not thought it through. I had never sat myself down and said to myself, hold on, Semirah, what if you win? You are shy. How are you going to survive for three weeks surrounded by total strangers?

Anyone who believes the competitive spirit in America is dead has never been in a supermarket when the cashier opens another check-out line.

She was one of those people who seemed to regard busyness as a contest you could win. p. 246

People like to see a king uncrowned, like to see a thoroughbred racehorse beaten when he's running at the top of his form and has outrun everything in sight. They wanted to see that the king, the top dog, the best man, has a flaw, can be beaten like them, is vulnerable like them, can be defeated, unfrocked, uncrowned, knocked down, and thus brought right down to their level.

Lazy people tend not to take chances, but express themselves by tearing down other's work.