The Next Great Entrepreneurs – Market Leadership
Published March 23, 2011 | 
Looking closely at the different tactical strategies developed and honed to a highly-skilled discipline by Great Entrepreneurs, we recognize that one very important Entrepreneurial tactic aims at formidable market leadership if not dominance, and is an aggressive hard-hitting approach right from the start, following a clear plan to have a permanent leadership position. It is important to note that before an Entrepreneur embarks on this bold strategy they must clearly understand and realize that it’s the one tactic that represents the greatest gamble or risk. There is very little room for mistakes and absolutely no room for any second chances.
Everything has to work out precisely for this strategy to be a success, and it necessitates a considerable amount of time for thought, reflection, careful analysis and examination, and purposeful preparation of a business plan. In addition, the strategy demands substantial resources and continuing efforts to preserve and maintain the leadership position. 
If not, then unfortunately all the work simply creates a market for a competitor to seize the position as the leader.
Indeed, there are many who clearly feel this strategy presents such an enormous risk that the development of other stratagems has taken place. A direct result of the notion that the leadership tactic will most likely fail more often than it can possibly succeed. This leads us to another important Entrepreneur’s line of attack that simply takes what has already been developed by another, making improvements that create a better product or service than the innovative Entrepreneurs that first developed it for the market.
Basically, the idea is to let someone else innovate, and then quickly proceed with their idea and provide the consumers what they really want and are more than eager to pay for. A great example of this is when IBM created the PC after Apple successfully created the market with its leadership strategy, and within two years it had taken over from Apple leadership in the personal computer field, becoming the fastest-selling brand and the standard all other entries in the market are compared to.
The main point to understand is that IBM chose a much less risky Entrepreneurial market approach, and succeeded at it. Although since then, Apple Computer has been a great success, as the original innovator it might have failed to completely understand its success in the beginning.
This type of tactical approach starts with the markets, is both market-focused and market-driven, requires a rapidly growing-market, satisfies an already existing market-demand rather than having to create one, and has proven likely to work most successfully in high-tech industries for one very simple reason; high-tech Entrepreneurs and Innovators are least likely to be market-focused and naturally concentrate on the technology and product.
The strategy of imitation or replication involves a very high degree of innovation, as it is not good enough to offer same product or services at a lower cost to the market. 
Consumers are looking for the increased-value of even greater innovation in addition to competitive pricing.
Openings or voids in the market are created by poor habits and frequently simple mistakes of market leaders including arrogance and the overconfidence of believing that something cannot be any good unless they thought of it first. By focusing entirely upon one segment of the market, typically the high profit segment, and ignoring the volume of the larger market, market leaders can swiftly bring about their own sudden failure in the leadership position.
Market leaders often exhibit a complete misunderstanding of quality which is not what the innovator puts in, but what the consumer market is ultimately willing to pay for. A leader also tends at times to price products and services too high, creating significant market opportunities for competitive Entrepreneurs, while at the same time, failing to adapt to more diverse segments of the market.
Finally, Great Entrepreneurs are always prepared to act swiftly and decisively to take advantage of favorable market conditions attributable to the mistakes and indecisiveness of soon-to-be former market leaders.
Get Ready for the Future…
Published March 18, 2011 | “Study the past, if you would divine the future.” – Confucius
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchill
“Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have no control: now.” – Denis Waitley
“The best way to predict the future is create it.” – Peter Drucker
“Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.” – Thomas J. Watson
A question that should be on the mind of every Entrepreneur and small business owner even before they start their business, and most certainly while operating, is are you ready for the future? The global economy is in a constant state of change and evolution. Now whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we are all able to adapt to them and make them work for us to create greater efficiencies and substantial increases in profit. However, ready or not, here they come!
Entrepreneurs and small business owners must constantly consider the past, the present and the future. 
The lessons and things that can be learned from the past, both good and bad, that can be applied to the things that have to be successfully accomplished today in the most efficient ways, and what methods and processes to keep, and improvements to make to successfully accomplish tomorrow’s business tasks better and faster.
You should always be thinking and have one eye and on in terms of how you are going to do business in the future. 
Before you realize it and your awareness kicks in, most of the future changes are already in the process of taking place.
To have a better picture and clearly understand where we are going, you need to experience an amazing look back at the history of technology, and the following video will give you a incredible glimpse of how far we have come.
IBM Centennial Film: 100 X 100 – A century of achievements that have changed the world
Understanding the Positioning of a Leader
Published May 30, 2010 | Many companies such as Avis and Seven-Up found viable positions to marketing leaders, but most companies don’t want to be an also-ran, successful or not, and they want to be a leader like Hertz or 
Coke, so how do you get to be a leader, actually, it’s quite simple to do, for example, remember Charles Lindbergh and Neil Armstrong? You just get there ‘first with the most’ and history shows that the first brand into the brain, on average, gets twice the long-term market share of the No. 2 brand and twice again as much as the No. 3 brand.
If you are still not convinced, to further prove the importance of being first, consider the fact that when a marketing leader isn’t first in a new category, the new product is usually an also-ran in the minds of the target consumer market, for example, take Coca-Cola, a gigantic company compared with Dr. Pepper, and yet when Coke introduced a competing product, Mr. Pibb, even the immense resources of the cola giant that is Coca-Cola, couldn’t put much of a dent in 
Dr. Pepper’s sales, and Kodak was supposedly going to cream Polaroid when they got into the instant camera business, but their results were disappointing to say the least, as Kodak managed to take only a small share, at the great expense of a substantial loss in its conventional camera business.
You must understand that as long as a company owns the position, there is no point in running advertisements that repeat the obvious, as in “We’re No.1” for instance, as it is much better to enhance the product category in the consumer prospect’s mind, for example, 
IBM’s advertising usually ignores competition and sells the value of computers in general. So then another good question becomes why isn’t it a good idea to rent advertising that says, “We’re No. 1”? The reason is psychological, as either the prospect knows you are No. 1 and wonders why you are so insecure that you have to say so, or the prospect doesn’t know you are No. 1, if not, why not, and you don’t want to create an opening for any doubt to creep into the minds of your target consumer market.
“The real thing”, this classic Coca-Cola advertising campaign is a strategy that can work for any leader, as the essential ingredient is again ‘getting into the mind first,’ and then keeping that position by reinforcing the original concept, in other words, Coke is the standard by which all others are judged, and in contrast, everything else is an imitation of the “real thing.” Now this is not the same thing as saying, “We’re No. 1,” but the “real thing,” like a first love, will always occupy a special place in the consumer prospect’s mind.
You must also be aware that you cannot define your leadership position in your own terms, it must instead be defined in the prospect’s terms, and saying we are, “The best-selling high-definition television under $1,000 in North America,” just won’t work, as you have to build a leadership position using the prospect’s terms, which is what’s already in their mind.
One classic marketing mistake made by market leaders is to assume that the power of the product is derived from the power of the organization, but it’s just the reverse, as the power of the organization is derived from the power of the product, the position that the leader’s product owns in the consumer prospect’s mind. Coke has power, but outside the cola field, the Coca-Cola Company has to earn its power the hard way, either by getting into the mind first, by establishing a strong alternative position, or by repositioning the leader, as we see with Coca-Cola’s Mr. Pibb, that ran a poor second place race to Dr. Pepper, and all the power of the Coca-Cola Company couldn’t do much about it.
Just like Coke, Xerox has much power, as Xerox means copier, and Xerox owns the copier position because it got into the mind the first thing, and exploited that copier position by a massive marketing program, but in computers, word processors and other office products, Xerox starts at ground zero, and usually without much success.
So you have to first ask yourself, “What position do I own now?”, and realize external strategy is really thinking in reverse, so instead of starting with yourself, you start with the mind of the consumer prospect, and instead of asking 
what you are, you ask what ‘position you already own in the mind’ of the prospect, and changing minds in our over-communicated society is an extremely difficult task, as it’s much easier to work with what’s already there. Next, ask yourself, “What position do I want to own?”, and then ask, “How can I be the first to claim a unique position in the mind of my customer?”, as here is where you try to figure out the best position to “own” from a long-term perspective.
Finally, it is critical to remember, “Own” is the key word, and too many failed programs set out to communicate a position that is impossible to preempt right from the very start because someone else already “owns” it.