Competitor analysis

The competitive landscape is a crucial element that new ventures must carefully evaluate before jumping at a market. However, most scipreneurs focus on the categories of competitors as a way of identifying threats rather than opportunities.

Competitors in a space are defined by customers, not by the technology or by other companies. What matters is how users solve their problems, that's how you can build a competitive landscape.

Sometimes you can be completely blindsided when you focus on similar technologies. Suddenly you realize a very low tech approach solves the same problem in a way you could not anticipate.

On the other hand, you may be to narrowly focused on a company that claims to solve a problem, but if your customers don't know it, or don't use it in that way, then you still have an open landscape.

The Blue Ocean strategy should be a way of identifying a niche within a market (see: Ten metrics to judge a market) but Blue Ocean strategy gives little insight.

jobs theory, and specifically jobs theory and customer journeys can be a great tool to identify not just opportunities, but how users perceive the alternatives. After all, there is always a solution to the problem.