Who cares what they're doing?
In the end, it's not worth paying much attention to the competition anyway. Why
not? Because worrying about the competition quickly turns into an obsession.
What are they doing right now? Where are they going next? How should we
react?
Every little move becomes something to be analyzed. And that's a terrible
mind-set. It leads to overwhelming stress and anxiety. That state of mind is bad
soil for growing anything.
It's a pointless exercise anyway. The competitive landscape changes all the
time. Your competitor tomorrow may be completely different from your
competitor today. It's out of your control. What's the point of worrying about
things you can't control?
Focus on yourself instead. What's going on in here is way more important than
what's going on out there. When you spend time worrying about someone else,
you can't spend that time improving yourself.
Focus on competitors too much and you wind up diluting your own vision.
Your chances of coming up with something fresh go way down when you keep
feeding your brain other people's ideas. You become reactionary instead of
visionary. You wind up offering your competitor's products with a different coat
of paint.
If you're planning to build "the iPod killer" or "the next Pokemon," you're
already dead. You're allowing the competition to set the parameters. You're not
going to out-Apple Apple. They're defining the rules of the game. And you can't
beat someone who's making the rules. You need to redefine the rules, not just
build something slightly better.
Don't ask yourself whether you're "beating" Apple (or whoever the big boy is
in your industry). That's the wrong question to ask. It's not a win-or-lose battle.
Their profits and costs are theirs. Yours are yours.
If you're just going to be like everyone else, why are you even doing this? If
you merely replicate competitors, there's no point to your existence. Even if you
wind up losing, it's better to go down fighting for what you believe in instead of
just imitating others.