25. Market Leaders Get Killed by Non-Competitors

A market leader can repel direct competitors and still be made irrelevant by a product from outside its category. Windows was not displaced by another desktop operating system so much as computing moved to phones and the cloud. Customers abandon a solution category when a different route satisfies the underlying desire better.

Track where customers’ time and spending migrate, especially toward things your industry dismisses as toys or unrelated. Revisit the desire behind your product rather than benchmarking only familiar rivals. The best radio maker still loses when customers choose streaming.

Original sketch and model by Paras Chopra. Read the source chapter.