‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change,’ said Charles Darwin, who first studied theology at Cambridge.
How did a female Kenyan, 30 something year-old entrepreneur see possibility in an unremarkable space, creating a nifty small business success in green Tigoni? How do corporate Goliaths use a ‘something from something’ tactic?
Is it possible to apply a ‘something from nothing’ approach to gain an elusive competitive advantage? Are we looking in the wrong places to identify the illusive secret sauce? 50 shades of green
Less than an hour’s drive outside frantic Nairobi, sits the serene rolling tea fields of slighter cooler Tigoni. In 1903 the first tea seedlings were part of an experimental planting. In 1910, the first commercial tea farm, Kiambethu, in Tigoni took root, with commercial cultivation of tea beginning on a larger scale in Kenya in 1924.
Today the tea value chain contributes two percent to Kenya’s overall gross domestic product (GDP), roughly 40 percent of agricultural GDP, employing 6.5 million people directly and indirectly.
‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see,’ advised Henry David Thoreau. In a space behind Tigoni’s only active petrol station, where once a struggling local restaurant, and then a fruit and vegetable shop did not survive, sits a case study in creativity.
Nifty smart thinking
In an example of imaginative ‘out of the box’ thinking, a few small rooms in a nondescript building, that no one really noticed, almost magically became Nifty Café and Wine Bar in October 2021. By opening up the back wall, and buildin’Know exactly what you stand for is important, know what experience you want your customer to walk away with. Consistency is key, in quality, in service. Small businesses don’t get the luxury of off seasons, we need to insist on great standards and that’s what will help us grow. You need to keep learning, keep listening and keep adjusting. The market changes, people change and you must be willing to evolve,’ advises Nifty owner, Kenya born and raised Sakina Seif.
Something from something
Unlike petite Nifty, a rich well endowed balance sheet company, can play to its strengths, just overwhelming small competitors. This is a playing chicken, ‘don’t mess with me’ approach. But is there a way that the tiny almost unnoticed competitor can get a jump on the market leader?
If a corporate giant has an endowment of valuable resources, the approach is to exploit those resources to overwhelm, outspend any competitor.
This would be the method of a dominant rival; use their significant supremacy in, for instance, liquidity, market share, technology, or know-how just to overpower the competition.
‘If you are relatively better endowed, your imperative is to invest in expensive advantages that your competitors can’t match. For example, when upstart Reebok challenged Nike in athletic shoe sales, Nike invented a new scale-sensitive cost category – athlete endorsement (e.g. Air Jordon, Dream Team), and cranked up the investments in this category to heights never even contemplated before until Reebok said ‘no mas.’ The rest is history: Reebok flatlined and Nike solidified its dominance. The general rule, then, is when you have a resource advantage over competition, look to invest in the most expensive sources of competitive advantage,’ explains Roger Martin.
But by definition, most companies, NGOs and development partners are trying to get by with the little [often dwindling] resources they have. How can they possibly compete?
Something from nothing
Something from zero sounds crazy, bordering on impossible, but there may be something one is failing to notice. Nifty’s success is a prime example.
If you are feeling lost and broke, at a ‘major resource disadvantage’ the focus has to be on looking out for sources of advantage that are cheap and doable for you, but tricky for the overconfident competition to follow.
Stress is on noticing what others may have missed. Turning what you have taken for granted as a cool spring in the desert, quenching a thirst for a competitive advantage.
‘If you lag your competitors dramatically in resources, don’t cry yourself to sleep at night and give up. You have a tough and tricky strategy task – but not an impossible one. Your central task is to think through how you can gain an advantage on the cheap. Start by refusing to focus on and obsess about how and on what your competitors are spending their massive resources. Instead ask, despite all that spending, what are customers missing? By the way, that means customers of all sorts because many modern markets are two sided. Then spend all your strategic thinking energy on finding inexpensive ways to achieve uniqueness in meeting those unmet customer needs,’ advises Martin.
Look under your nose and create
Search along two pathways. The first is assets under your nose that you aren’t utilsing. The second is cheap but valuable abilities that you can create – like competing on time, responding to people just about right away, or being more tech savvy, or conscientious, paying attention to detail.
Or, focusing on being creative, imaginative, innovative – not following the path of stale worn out thinking. Focus on a genuine attribute – insight, not fluff.
Whatever you do, don’t compete on hype. That space is over subscribed. Not surprising to see companies simply copying each other, so that the more they compete, the more they look the same. Remember purchasers buy feelings and emotions. We buy based on how we want to feel. What kind of car do you own? What kind of purse do you carry? Why do people pay ten times the price for an Apple iPhone versus a cheap Android clone? You might not know even why you buy? Research by the Nielsen shows that roughly 90 percent of purchasing decisions are made almost subconsciously.
Other inexpensive, almost no cost resource one has is mindset. In particular, the ability to manage the ever increasing pace of change. An ability to see new realities and quickly adapt. Today, on all sorts of dimensions change becomes ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’.