To be great, you must understand the competition
I was listening to Morning Edition on the way to work a couple days ago, and something caught my ear. One of the reporters was talking about the recent problems that Toyota has been having. The president of Toyota, Akio Toyota, was seemingly absent from the response until he was cornered at the WEF. What he said wasn’t that big of a deal. But something the reporter harped on struck a chord with me.
Apparently, after giving a curt response, he hopped in an Audi and drove away. The reporter and people interviewed for this story made a big deal of this. OMFG, the president of Toyota isn’t driving a Toyota?!?!?! First of all, the WEF is in Davos, and I doubt the president of Toyota has is cars flown in when he visits foreign countries. But even if he owned the car, who cares?
It reminded me that to build a great product, you need to understand your competitors. And I can tell you that if I were the president of a car company, I would make sure to drive competitors products all the time. Luckily, I dont have to drop $30k to test out our competitors. I set aside 30 minutes a week to use our competitors products, just so I know ‘what is market’ with respect to other online invitation and party planning sites.
So just keep that in mind: if you are in a market where you can use your competitors products, take advantage. Use them. Learn from their successes and mistakes, and build something better.
