A view of the future of your competitive landscape

Holding a clear and honest perspective of your current competitive landscape is valuable, but developing foresight as to how this landscape could evolve in the future...and how you may successfully respond to that change, will give you a wildly useful competitive edge.

But it's not just about creating plausible scenarios as to how your direct competitors may evolve, it's also about understanding the possibilities available within the other factors of the broader competitive landscape.

The changing landscape of alternatives

As technologies, like for example agentic AI, become better, cheaper and more widespread, how might these new technologies affect your industry? Could these and other future technologies serve as viable substitutes for your offering in the future?

If the magazine industry had developed foresight of the emergence of digital media in time - where might some of these brands have ended up today?

New disruptors

Every industry needs to consider the future threat of new, nimbler disruptors who are not bound by legacy systems - that can swoop in and capture huge tracts of market share from established players. What new disruptors can be already seen lurking on the horizon? What conditions will accelerate their development? What can be done now to minimise the growing threat?

Shifting power of the supply chain

Today's suppliers might be tomorrow's competitors. Understanding how changing conditions may also change the power dynamics within the marketplace is key. What emerging changes could change the dynamics of the supply chain? What future scenarios could this change bring about? What can be done now to proactively respond to this change?

Emerging buyer preferences

Customer behaviour changes as different options within the marketplace gain traction. Winning companies are able to understand how forces are creating opportunities to lead this change ahead of competitors.

BTW - the global alcohol industry is currently experiencing this radical shift of buyer preferences in a rather uncomfortable way. Did they see it coming?

There is no data that you can point to that provides concrete evidence that these opportunities are imminent, but rather thanks to a program of ongoing scanning, sense-making, strategy and innovation - a clearer picture of evolving preferences can be created thanks to an iterative approach and a customer-centric mindset.

Shaping competition

How these forces collectively change over time will determine what the competitive landscape will be like in the future. There is obviously no way to accurately predict what things will look like in 3-years from now, but what is possible is to develop an ongoing program to monitor change, make sense of that change and adjust strategy in response to the projected future-realities.

With so much change affecting all industries it would be difficult to successfully compete without this kind of strategic foresight discipline in place.