Five Classic Competitive Strategy Mistakes

Based on my experience, here are five business strategy mistakes that organizations often make:

1.  Focusing on market share extensively, while not thinking enough about how to drive product category growth - as a result, they miss chances to grow the pie for all

 2.  Paying too little attention to a maturing core business while focusing effort on growth into new markets, resulting in further erosion of the core

3.  Overestimating economies of scale and scope - and forgetting that diseconomies of scale and scope can become substantial

4.  Benchmarking rivals and then imitating one particular activity or capability, while not realizing that the rival's competitive advantage comes from how that activity fits tightly into a broader, integrated system of activities

5.  Resorting prematurely to price as a competitive weapon - not being creative enough to think about other ways to attract customers, deepen their relationship with existing customers, and grow an entire category