Competitive cycles in a hyper-connected world

This chapter presents a competitive framework suggesting a circular perspective in analyzing and managing competitive wars in a hyper-competitive and hyper-connected world. The author uses the expression “competitive cycles” to represent the typical journey of a competitive arena. The journey starts with the status quo, characterized by a direct confrontation on specific success factors (war of position); soon or later, however, the competition is disrupted by a game-changing strategy from some player (war of movement). This leads to the next step of the journey, made of imitation strategies, and ending up when the new game eventually becomes the new status quo. Then everything flows, until a new cycle, with its new rules, will start again. The digital tsunami is adding momentum and clock-speed to competitive cycles. In every moment of a firm’s life, it is vitally important to be fully aware of its different seasons. In fact, behind each of them lies a distinctive rationale, which calls for specific offensive and defensive abilities.