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6 major forces affecting a business and determines how competitive a company is.

1. Power, vigor and competence of existing competitors
2. Power, vigor and competence of potential competitors
3. Power, vigor and competence of complementors
4. Power, vigor and competence of customers
5. Power, vigor and competence of suppliers
6. Possibility that what you business is doing can be done in a different way [substitution]

Your business is at much greater risk:
* If your competitors have deep pockets or if there plenty of competitors.
* If your organization has limited number of suppliers and you have limited choices.
* If you have limited number of customers or if they are very demanding or if their business is at greater risk.
* If there is a possibility of new potential competitors getting into your business and if they better skilled, better funded or more aggressive than your existing competitors
* If there is a possibility that your product or service can be built or delivered in a different way or the same [or better] value delivery that your product is offering can be delivered through completely new or different alternatives. [as pagers were replaced by phones]
* If there is a possibility that a complementary product supplier decides to get into your product market [complementors are other businesses from whom customers buy complementory products. i.e. software providers are complementors to computer suppliers]

It is imperative to assess your business on all these aspects along with PESTEL Analysis (kindly google for this).

Be vigilant and 'change before it's too late'

When your business or industry is into disruption phase or is facing Strategic Inflection Point [SIP] the rules of doing business changes. These new rules are often very powerful enough to kill your business.

The trouble is, not only we fail to realize that the rules have changed-even worse, we don't even know what new rules are we supposed to follow. It's chaotic and confusing.

All businesses operate by some set of unstated rules and sometimes these rules change-often in very significant ways. Yet there is no flashing sign that heralds these rule changes. They creep up on you as they crept on others, without warning.

Sometimes these changes affect only a company, other times they affect an entire industry. So the ability to recognize that the winds have shifted and to take appropriate action before you wreck you boat is crucial to the future of an enterprise.

Constant learning is an imperative

We live in an age in which the pace of technological change is pulsating ever faster, causing disruption across various industries. This increased rate of change will have an impact on you, no matter what you do for living. It will bring new competition from new ways of doing things, from corners that you don't expect.

They are inevitable. Whatever can be changed, will be changed. We can't stop these changes. We can't hide from them. Instead, we must focus on getting ready for them all the time.

No amount of formal planning can anticipate such changes. Which means we have to plan and prepare ourselves the way fire department does: It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, yet they develop an energetic and efficient team that is capable to respond to any unanticipated event. They maintain their team in great shape with constant training and preparations all the time.

Strategic Inflection Point [SIP] is a time in the life of a business when it's fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights or a signal about the beginning of the end.

SIP can be caused by technological change or can be caused by the competitors or due to various other factors associated to the business environment [kindly search for the details about PESTLE analysis]

They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted. thus; simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may not be enough. SIP can be deadly when unattended to. Companies that begin to decline as a result of it's changes, rarely recover their previous greatness.

But it does not always lead to disaster. When the way business is being conducted changes, it creates opportunities for players who are adept at operating in the new way. For them the SIP mean an opportunity for a new period of exponential growth.

CHOSE GREATNESS

We sense a dangerous disease infecting our modern culture and eroding hops: an increasingly prevalent view that greatness owes more to circumstances, even Luck, than to action and discipline-that what happens to us matters more than what we do. It is deeply debilitating life perspective, one that we don't want to teach young people.

Do we really believe that our actions count little, that those who create something great are merely lucky, that our circumstances imprison us?

Do we want to build a society and culture that encourages us to believe that we aren't responsible for our choices and accountable for our performance or actions?

Greatness is not primarily a matter of circumstances; greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline. It is not mainly a matter of what happens to you but a matter of what we create, what you do, and how well you do it.

We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, by the good luck or bad luck we get, or by the unfairness of life. We are not imprisoned by crushing setbacks, self inflicted mistakes or our past success. We are not imprisoned by the times in which we live, by the number of hours in a day or even the number of hours we're granted in our short lives. Inspite of all the limitations, we are still free to chose, free to become great.

In the end, what matters is our CHOICES.