BOOKLETS

// Excerpt from "Positioning: The art of being first", by Bengt Anderson

Why you must be first.

No company can survive without being the first. It's no longer enough to be one of the best. Not even second best. The lead position is the only one that counts.

"The market is so big there's room for everybody you sometimes hear executives say. "We can be successful and profitable even if we content ourselves with a small piece of it." But that's not the way modern markets work. Having a small piece of a big market is nothing but a big failure. You have to make yourself the leader in any market you decide to compete.

But surely that can't be right? Everybody can't be best, can they? Then there would be only one company in any line of business. That's the whole point. To compete successfully today, every company must create its own line of business in which it stands on top of the heap.

This is an application of the classic principle of divide et impera, Divide and Rule. A company must break up a previously homogeneous market to control at least one part of it. There are three weapons available for doing this. What follows here is advice on how to use them. ( Order the booklet "Positioning: The art of being first")