Competing in New Markets

Strategic advisors counsel managers to conduct a thorough competitive analysis emphasizing key points of differentiation. But for new markets, Professor McDonald’s research suggests that reports of the threat posed by similar rivals may be greatly exaggerated, and managers may be well-advised to focus on substitutes, using rivals as mere stepping stones to speed their own progression and keep costs low. Similarly, while popular media accounts laud market ‘evangelists’ who open up new market space through symbolic acts of persuasion, McDonalds’s research argues that successful innovation in new markets resembles problem-solving more than missionary work, and suggests that managers may be better off riding the coattails of these hardworking evangelists to establish a defining position in the new market.