Sublime

Early stage startups struggle to compete on the must-haves and performance improvements, as they generally require a lot of engineering resources. Delighters, on the other hand, are something smaller companies do well. As such, it’s often better to focus on new or emerging markets with slightly lower needs and then excel at the details.

Ogilvy on Advertising and Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. In

Big Fish, Small Pond: Positioning to win a subsegment of an existing market

firms are continually confronted with a basic dilemma. On the one hand, they can choose to follow a practice area down its life cycle, adapting organization structures, staffing strategies, pricing, leadership styles, and all else we have discussed above to the new requirements of the marketplace. Of course, in so doing they will be transforming th

To determine how to win, an organization must decide what will enable it to create unique value and sustainably deliver that value to customers in a way that is distinct from the firm’s competitors.

Can we organize and specialize our people in innovative ways, so that they become particularly skilled and valuable to the market because of their focus on a particular market segment’s needs?