The Competition Conundrum

Read this post on United Prosperity this morning. It reminded me of Nathaniel Whitmore's self-proclaimed snarkiness on Twitter a few weeks back at the announcement of "yet another" web-based social change content aggregator. I reacted:

This looks sadly like a manifestation of one of the downfalls of our current philanthropic system. Why, when a project like Kiva already exists, has crossed numerous startup hurdles, and is well on their way to actually making it in to the mainstream, would someone choose to create a competing organization with no significant competitive advantage (that will spend money on redundant overhead, not to mention having to learn many of the lessons already learned by their predecessor) instead of throwing their energy, passion, and whatever innovating ideas they have behind the existing successful project!? It's hard to see that as anything other than ego getting in the way of the best interests of the cause.

It was an honest question. Still is. But it's got me wondering something else.

Does everyone who's thrown themselves behind an idea develop a competitive advantage blind-spot?

Some days I think I have. Someone sends me a link to a site I've looked at dozens of times and I can fire off a response email with half a dozen points of differentiation without even looking at the screen. I even find myself getting impatient when others don't seem to see how clearly different the Tipping Bucket is from this other site they've come across.

When it comes to assessing the "competitive landscape," I've pretty much stopped listening.

I've spent so much time analyzing, evaluating, classifying and subdividing the players in this space...I'm so familiar with the subtleties of distinction and overlap, that I hardly listen when some well-meaning associate starts a sentence with "Oh, it's like..."

Thing is, it's those perspectives that really matter. These cursory, uniformed, unsophisticated perceptions shape the market, and social entrepreneurs (myself included) would do well to pay attention to them.