Exploiting the Market gap through innovation

Interesting interview from Charles Geschke on his life at Adobe....http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2038

Amazing to know that this 4th largest IT products company was the first to pioneer freeware with Adobe much before the Linux of the world. Charles cites of how Microsoft has bullied its way into the market by cloning someones innovation on Excel, Word, PPTs and so on and did so well for itself. He also mentions how the company belts out new products so frequently into the market and monetizes it. The simple rule he says is by exploiting the market gap i.e. identify a unmet need in the market, and launch a product to get 100% of market share....


But honestly, how does one spot such market gaps and exploit them for economic profit in an increasingly complex world! Lets look at what structured approached we have to uncover potent unmet needs:

1. Marketing research - which companies in CPG industries: P&G, Unilever, etc. constantly exploit
2. Proximity to customer by eliminating channels - which company like Dell has exploited so well...

Or a sheer gut feel and intuition!!!! or reading "Blue Ocean Strategy"!

Is your competitor also your best complement?

There are very businesses that have their greatest competitor as their complement as well. One can see this more pronounced in the Enterprise software segment that I looked at. Let us look at some interesting successful organizations that are both competitor and complement:

1.Windows-Oracle
a. The largest market share for Oracle database is on Windows platform, but Oracle competes aggressively with Microsoft in the database segment MSSQL Vs Oracle.
b. Oracle Accelerate solution competes with Microsoft NetDynamics, Axatpa, & their insignificant other acquisitions
2. Windows-SAP: They sing a duet with SAP enterprise software running on Windows, but they compete as well Microsoft NetDynamics, Axatpa, & their insignificant other acquisitions and SAP Business One.

Seeing the above some interesting question arose:

1. How can you uncover the complement in your competitor?
2. How do you nurture such relationships for economic value while fighting in the market place?

To answer the first question maybe it helps to look at the ecosystem and value networks in which these organizations operate.

For the second question, it is about execution of well strategized Go-to-Market initiatives (as we popularly call them in the Partners & Alliances world).

Any thoughts/experiences you want to share on this….