Do you know your competitors?

are there during one season and disappear before the next season. Birds such as seasonal shore birds and kingfishers just appear for a season and disappear to another region. (life.gaiam.com/article/ vegan-vegetable.)

Other animals such as otter and tsenzi cannot easily be noticed while fishing though they are also effective competitors.
The pre-occupation of most fishermen in Zimbabwe is to copy each other so as to get ahead.
It is never about how they can come up with a revolutionary way of fishing, which will throw other competitors off balance.
Most fishermen behave like most Zimbabwean businessmen who are known to be highly educated but serious copycats of businesses that are already in the decline stages of their lifecycles.

Many fishermen fail to acknowledge some of the competitors noted above because over the years human beings are accustomed to being a dominant species over the other animals.
Dominance brings with it arrogance, self-containment and a false sense of security.

Therefore very few fishermen bother to think about their effectiveness and efficiency in bass fishing visa-a vis other competitors.
Theoretically if most fishermen were to develop strategic plans, their focus would be more on fellow fishermen as opposed to other competitors such as kingfishers, ducks and crocodiles.

If the fisherman is very good, chances are he will dedicate his time talking about his historical performance, his sustained competitive advantages and a few lessons he has taught other fishermen.
In the mind of the successful fisherman, there is nothing, which he imagines can stop his dominance.

The only thing he must focus his energies on is on acquiring better boats, fishing equipment and keeping fit.
In other words, his efforts must be on sustaining his competitive advantage never about how he can disrupt the way fishing is carried out by his competitors in such a way that by the time the competitors notice this disruption he would have taken over the critical market to himself.

To what extent can dominance be sustained?
My economics lecturer used to emphasise that the best thing that a company can do is to develop its market until it is a monopoly in that industry.
One way of becoming and sustaining monopolistic position is by erecting high barriers to entry.
Johnson & Scholes (1997) say that legislation, differentiation and known retaliation tactics can enforce barriers to entry.

In local environment we have companies that enjoyed monopolistic advantages such TelOne, Zimpost and Zesa.
These were protected by legislation. One didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to appreciate that they had a guaranteed market “forever” in Zimbabwe.
Though the management considered Porter’s five forces in their various strategic discussions, I have no doubt most of the discussions centred on sustaining their competitive monopolistic advantage by making few additions and modifications to their products (differentiation).

The discussions in their boardrooms never focused on what can disrupt their market dominance, which appeared destined for eternity.
Questioning the sustenance of dominance in most market leaders is in most cases regarded as being daft.
If a director stands up in a boardroom and asks whether you know your competitors.
The answer he is most likely to get is “of course, we do”. In most cases he will be treated with contempt for asking what will be considered a stupid question though understanding your future competitors at times require Solomonic wisdom.

Technology has been used to destroy many sanctuaries. Zimpost never imagined that the computer and cellphone would take over most of its functions despite being protected by legislation and having solid infrastructure.
TelOne never imagined being a spectator in a telecoms business, which is now dominated by cellphone operators.
I have no doubt Zesa is also soon going to be a small player in the industry which will be using gas, wind, sun and manure to generate electricity at a fraction of its cost in a few years to come.

For most dominating companies the threat of new industry is irrelevant (Porter 1980).
The new entrants will be hard to see like tsenzi and otters in a dam. Most fishermen get to notice the menace of robusta to bream only after putting them in a small pond and watching them closely.

The same applies to market leaders, they fail to notice the effect of new technology or new ways of doing business until the whole market has been taken over by new competitors whose threats did not appear to be strong during their time of entry.
Being a market leader is always problematic because the preoccupation of market leaders is sustaining competitive advantage.

This implies that they spend most of their time altering/modifying their products and service offerings to meet the known needs of their customers.
Are entry barriers sustainable?
New entrants in most cases do not replete the same physical structures that dominant market player has to restrict entry.
Assets such as capitalisation, machinery, equipment branch network can be used as methods of increasing barriers to entry.

A few years ago internet café business was the most lucrative in Zimbabwe’s urban areas.
Barriers to entry in this industry were office space and access to numerous telephone lines that were difficult to obtain from TelOne.
Today internet cafes are now irrelevant as people can now easily access internet in the comfort of their workplaces, home and while in the kombis using a cell- phone.

EcoCash is slowly driving people away from post offices and banks. I can bet my last cent that none of the current banks and Zimpost identified Econet as their competitor two years ago.
The future threat to life companies is Ecolife though life companies prefer to sit on their laurels and think Ecolife is going to be one of those fads.

Once the legal hurdles are sorted out it will take over the market particularly low-income markets.
Some entry barriers can be bypassed by technological innovation and can therefore not be relied on to continually sustain competitive advantage.
But do the customers rely know what they want? Do they know exactly what satisfy their needs?
There is no company that can claim to know the exact needs of their customers because needs are progressive in nature and are thus not permanent.

Once one satisfies a need another one develops. Some of the needs of customers are actually created by entrepreneurs.
Twenty years ago it was not a want to own a cellphone but nowadays you feel empty without one.
Do companies understand their present competition? Do they understand their future source of competition?
Suppose you were to ask Broadercom its competitors, the answer you will probably get is Telecel, Econet and NetOne.

Truly these are Broadercom’s direct competitors today. It is important for Broadercom to come up with strategies to counter the strategies of these companies to survive in the present moment.
Nevertheless competitors are not fixed, what is fixed is the market for the products, goods and services.

In the near future, it has to make a choice of whether to come up with new rules for the market or sustain its growth pattern and die someday.
Technology is making very difficult to predict with a degree of certainty that your future competitors or where the source of competition will come from.
To survive you have to think of new ways of creating demand and of serving the customer better.
Since the invention of the fire and wheel, technology has given people incredible advantage over the status quo. It is now difficult to define and know your

competitor today. Enemies are now emanating from anywhere. They are everywhere.