Growth Comes from the Edges

As I start to get my head back into blogging after Christmas, I came across this quote from a Seth Godin Post on Dec 25. His discussion centers around companies who try and emulate extremely successful competitors, and why this is not a great strategy.

I recently did some work with a large grocery store chain, and in one meeting I was in someone made the comment that we should be like Walmart. Seth's post states the issue with this type of thinking:

• they already did what you are setting out to do (no reason for people to switch)
• these companies were cutting edge when they first introduced their business model (and hence why they became successful)

Taking best practices from successful competitors is one thing, but you need to bring your own value-add to the market place. Just like great music or movies often come from the fringe, so do great ideas, and this is what will drive growth. Emulating your competitors to create growth is a failed red-ocean strategy. Ideas and growth from the edge is blue ocean.