People love to quote Jack Welch, "Be number 1 or number 2, or get out." That's fine for GE and for other fortune 500 companies but that may not be an option for you. You have a business and you may never be number one or number two for that business. As a point of information, the phrase was popularized long before Jack Welch came along by George Zipf - see the wonderful explanation on the Whisper blog. It is an important concept and not one to be swept aside casually.
There are plenty of instances where it is just not possible to have only 2 of something:
- Are there 2 doctors?
- Could we really get by with only 2 lawyers? (All kidding aside.)
- Are there only 2 kinds of Ice Cream?
- Can 2 fire departments do it all?
Clearly there are plenty of situations where the market needs more than 2 of most things...
In fact, when we have only a few choices, or 2 of something, look at what happens.
- Lower competition leads to reduced product quality - Computer Operating Systems
- Telephone systems - AT&T was not the consumer's friend
- Cars - who pushed American car makers to do better, it was not each other.
- How bad would 2 movie studios be?
Markets can be divided and subdivided ad infinitum. That is not the path to take just to get down to a situation where you are number one or number two. The better way is to look at the existing players and say, "Ok, we're me too but different…" How you are different is what can make all of the difference.
- When Google started there were and had been dozens of search engines (Infoseek - 7/95 cutting-edge front page, histories of Lycos, Yahoo, Alta Vista, and on and on.)
- The 99cent Store was not the first discount chain.
- Plenty of Fish - certainly not the first or only dating site.
- Apple has not been the #1 or #2 supplier of personal computers for 2 decades
BTW - The remanants or current versions of Lycos, Infoseek, Ask Jeeves (now just Ask), Overture, and Snap are all affiliated with a certain Pasadena incubator. Coincidence?
What did they do to get where they are?
- They deliver a consistent product. Not necessarily the best.
- They retained their customers while others lose them.
- They just did their thing so well that people talked about it - they are remarkable.
- They started very focused and built when they had a bigger audience - conserved resources and built infrastructure to support the future demand.
There is more, but the point to be understood here is this: You can be a "Me Too" as long as that comes with a qualifier: "But we do __________ better." The qualifier needs to satisfy a demand that is unmet or unfulfilled by the existing market participants.
Did the world think it needed a different kind of vacuum when Dyson made his? The existing companies in that market did not think so. Something like 14 rejected it and then Dyson decided to start his own company. Now he's cleaning up… (How many Venture Capitalists would have backed that play?)
BTW - have you seen the next device? A hand dryer for hotels and airport bathrooms. This new dryer uses 25% of the energy and takes less time to do the job compared to a conventional model. Do you think it does it better? You can bet with confidence that it does.
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