Entrepreneurial Judo turns what the market leaders consider their strengths into the very weaknesses that defeat them.
The Japanese judo master looks for the strength that is his opponent’s pride and joy. He assumes, and does so with high probability, that the opponent bases his strategy on this strength in every fight. And then the judo master figures out where this continuing reliance on a particular strength leaves the opponent vulnerable and undefended. Then he turns his opponent’s strength into the opponent’s fatal weakness that defeats the opponent.
Businesses, like judo fighters, tend to become set in their behaviors. And then Entrepreneurial Judo turns what the market leaders consider their strengths into the very weaknesses that defeat them. For example, the Japanese became the leaders in one American market after the other: first in copiers, then in machine tools, then in consumer electronics, then in automobiles, and then in fax machines. The strategy was always the same. They turned what the Americans considered their strength into a weakness that defeated the American companies. The Americans saw high profitability as their greatest strength. And thus they focused on the high end of the market and left the mass market undersupplied and underserviced. The Japanese moved in with low-cost products with minimum features. The Americans didn’t even try to fight them. But when the Japanese had taken over the mass market they had the cash flow to move in on the high-end market, too. And they soon came to dominate both the mass market and the high-end market.
ACTION POINT: Be agile, recognize the strengths of your competitors, and look for opportunities in parts of the market that they have ignored.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurial Strategies (Corpedia Online Program)
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker