Defining Victory

Competitively Challenged

The competitive landscape changes to the point that the offerings of the enterprise encounter profit pressures that are challenging but not overwhelming.

Focus on sustaining continuous, incremental improvements to successfully avert the threat of growing competitors. In such a circumstance, a successful application of incremental improvements can deliver breakaway competitive advantage under the right conditions.

Targeted entrepreneurial efforts that provide that breakaway situation are the goal for the corporation.

Competitively Lost

The competitive landscape is one in which the markets are hostile to the offerings of the enterprise, preferring competitive offerings even if price breaks are offered. This invariably leads to moderate to heavy losses.

Focus on business or industry transformation to overcome the potentially lethal challenge of the competition. The entrepreneurial energies of the organization must be unleashed, and all obstacles to making that transformation happen must be overcome. This area of greatest change is a natural place for the entrepreneurial CIO.

In nearly every industry, CEOs are weighing the balance between keeping their financial break-even points low in case of a further downturn, and the risk that placing their entrepreneurial efforts on hold will result in a “lost” situation of competitive decline.

We are living in a time of economic recession and its aftermath, where the leaders of an industry can extend their lead–unless a competitor can redefine the terms of competition in an industry and disrupt the competitive landscape.

Many CEOs clearly feel they are seeing the potential for a “lost” situation, with 44% believing that entrepreneurship has been unfavorably affected by the recent economic downturn. This presents an opportunity for the entrepreneurial CIO.

In Part 3, we’ll explore the role of this key player.

Additional articles by Jorge Lopez:
Risky Business

An Entrepreneur’s Right IT Hand

Jorge Lopez is a Gartner Inc. vice president and distinguished analyst based in the United States, where he focuses on issues of concern to business executives, especially the CEO, and their relationship to IT and the CIO.