Business Insight Zone

Yesterday I quoted this question from a post by Matthew May:

“What is it that our competitors would struggle with if we were to cease?”

Today a colleague and I were talking about this question, and he wondered if I could supply an example of this phenomenon. After some false starts, we settled on one.

A few years ago, Intel bowed out of its long-running “gigahertz war” with AMD. In other words, it stopped marketing its processors based on their top speed. Instead, it began marketing its wares, especially the Centrino package, by emphasizing a combination of powerful capabilities and power-saving design — a ploy which helped to make the Centrino a big winner in laptops.

Although (1) AMD eventually found its footing, and (2) both companies did keep making some improvements to their chips’ top speeds, Intel’s move left AMD in the lurch for a while; the smaller company was forced to adjust its marketing. The “gigglehertz” wars were over, and the old rhetoric of “mine is faster than yours” no longer had traction.

What examples can you offer? When has Company A created problems for Company B by stopping doing something.

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Photo by Christine H., used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Category: Management, Technology