Cloudified Pricing—Coming to an Industry Near You
公告内容 Time：2019-10-12 16:50:40
When Belgian astronomer and mathematician Adolphe Quetelet applied the arithmetic mean to the study of social systems, he put to novel use a valuable tool for summarizing the distributions of different values. But strategy, unlike macroeconomics, has never been about averages. Strategy is about defying the powerful forces of commoditization and reversion to the mean by being exceptional in some way.
The need to think about the world in de-averaged terms and avoid becoming average oneself has never been more urgent than it is today. It’s therefore a good time for leaders to remind themselves of the necessity and art of defying averages.
STRATEGY HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT AVERAGES
Over time, markets become commoditized: new competitors appear; standard product designs emerge, making offerings more comparable; and consumers then enjoy more choices and become better educated in exercising those choices, forcing down prices to marginal cost and returns to the cost of capital.
Traditionally, one way to gain an advantage in such a situation is to be exceptional through scale and costs. In 1968, Bruce Henderson proposed the experience curve to explain how early entrants can accumulate volume and experience faster, thereby becoming the lowest-cost players in their industries. In 1976, Henderson observed that when equilibrium has been achieved in unregulated markets, they can support no more than three profitable significant competitors, which tend to have market shares in the proportions 4:2:1. This remarkable observation, known as the rule of three and four, has since been validated by extensive analysis across all industries.