Monday, April 30, 2007

Help For Henny Penny

I was talking with the CEO of a pretty good size company recently about my book, Attacking The Crown Jewels. "It's about strategic competitive defense," I said. "Well," he said, "please don't tell my VP of Sales about it. He worries enough about competition already and doesn't need any new ideas."

I asked him to tell me more about the VP of Sales (let's call him Henny Penny). It seems that Henny is like a magnet for any information about any possible competitive product. Once in possession of a nugget of competitive information, Henny alerts anyone and everyone he can think of, pummelling them with questions, announcing his worries and fears and asking if the sky is in fact falling. Needless to say, Henny's near daily missives are largely ignored by his coworkers, but do serve to keep his sales staff in a near constant state of panic. When confronted about this, Henny told his boss it was "motivating" for his troops.

I then pointed out that the strategic competitive defense planning process spelled out in Attacking The Crown Jewels might actually help Henny and his beleaguered staff. This step-by-step process lets you assess competitive threats, select the ones to focus on and plan defenses against them in an orderly, systematic fashion. Properly used, it makes the competitive threat assessment a routine activity. Thus Henny would know when his worries would be handled and how to feed the process. He would also be a part of the process that soberly assessed threats to determine those that are truly strategic -- that are severe, robust and credible -- and demand executive attention and action.

Henny did not get to be a successful VP of sales for a major company because he was a fool. Henny just sees that the woods are full of lurking threats and needs assurance that the organization is handling them for him and his team.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

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Friday, April 06, 2007

Zune Attack Update

Reader's of this blog and my book Attacking The Crown Jewels know that Microsoft developed Zune to threaten iPod/iTunes and thus distract Apple from threatening Windows by freeing OS X to run on non-Apple PCs. This strategy has been effective (see Why Microsoft Needs Zune, The Zune Attack Is Working and Apple Inc.-The Zune Attack Is Working). Now the Softies are considering a move that would increase the Zune threat against Apple. Taking a page out of the cell phone service provider play book, Zune would be offered at very low prices if you subscribed to the Zune store on a multi-year contract.

To understand the Zune strategy is to understand the crown jewels attack strategy. First, attack away from the competitor’s offering that threatens your strategy, the strategic threat. In this case, that threat is Apple's OS X if freed to run on non-Apple PCs. Second, attack one of the competitor’s offerings that is essential to its strategy, one of its crown jewels. So Microsoft attacks Apple's iPod/iTunes crown jewel. Finally, attack with enough credibility that the competitor must defend its crown jewels by diverting resources away from the strategic threat, thus reducing or eliminating the threat to you.

Collapsing the price of music players would put Apple in a quandary about its lack of subscription pricing. This strategy makes complete sense. It is a much better idea than trying to load Zune with differentiating features and functions. A music player is a music player (OK, I also believe a cell phone is a cell phone). More, Microsoft is much better at letting others experiment with features and functions and then copying the most successful ideas. I say go with your strength, Softies.

Just keep in mind that Zune's success is measured by the effect it has on keeping Apple from threatening Windows with OS X unchained, not how well Zune performs in the marketplace.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

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