Kim W C, Mauborgne R
INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France.
Harv Bus Rev. 1999 Jan-Feb;77(1):83-93.
Most companies focus on matching and beating their rivals. As a result, their strategies tend to take on similar dimensions. What ensues is head-to-head competition based largely on incremental improvements in cost, quality, or both. The authors have studied how innovative companies break free from the competitive pack by staking out fundamentally new market space--that is, by creating products or services for which there are no direct competitors. This path to value innovation requires a different competitive mind-set and a systematic way of looking for opportunities. Instead of looking within the conventional boundaries that define how an industry competes, managers can look methodically across them. By so doing, they can find unoccupied territory that represents real value innovation. Rather than looking at competitors within their own industry, for example, managers can ask why customers make the trade-off between substitute products or services. Home Depot, for example, looked across the substitutes serving home improvement needs. Intuit looked across the substitutes available to individuals managing their personal finances. In both cases, powerful insights were derived from looking at familiar data from a new perspective. Similar insights can be gleaned by looking across strategic groups within an industry; across buyer groups; across complementary product and service offerings; across the functional-emotional orientation of an industry; and even across time. To help readers explore new market space systematically, the authors developed a tool, the value curve, that can be used to represent visually a range of value propositions.
大多数公司专注于与对手比拼并击败对手。因此，它们的战略往往具有相似的维度。随之而来的是主要基于成本、质量或两者的渐进式改进的正面竞争。作者研究了创新型公司如何通过开拓全新的市场空间——即创造没有直接竞争对手的产品或服务——来摆脱竞争困境。这种价值创新之路需要不同的竞争思维模式和寻找机会的系统方法。管理者不应局限于界定行业竞争方式的传统边界内，而是可以有条不紊地跨越这些边界去寻找。这样做，他们就能找到代表真正价值创新的未被占据的领域。例如，管理者不是去关注本行业内的竞争对手，而是可以询问客户为何在替代产品或服务之间进行权衡。例如，家得宝（Home Depot）审视了满足家居装修需求的替代品。直觉公司（Intuit）审视了个人管理财务时可用的替代品。在这两个案例中，从新的视角看待熟悉的数据都产生了深刻的见解。通过审视行业内的战略群组、买家群体、互补产品和服务、行业的功能情感取向，甚至跨越时间，也能获得类似的见解。为了帮助读者系统地探索新的市场空间，作者开发了一种工具——价值曲线，可用于直观地呈现一系列价值主张。
