How I think about “competition”? Greg Satell‘s post “Platforms Are Eating the World” on Forbes.com, explains it exactly the way I see it. Change in the basis of competition is coming.
Business theorists have long thought of strategy as a game of chess. By making the right moves, managers could diminish the threat of new market entrants and substitutes and improve bargaining power with buyers and suppliers. That, it has long been thought, was what led to sustainable competitive advantage.
Yet strategy in a networked world is different. Leaders should become gardeners. Competitive advantage is no longer the sum of all efficiencies, but the sum of all connections. Strategy, therefore, must be focused on deepening and widening networks of talent, technology and information and we do that by accessing ecosystems through platforms.