Index:
Introduction
The Insight Is the Edge
A Culture of Curiosity
Knowledge Infrastructure
Acquire More Data
Access Services
Better Customer Conversations and a System
Final Thoughts
Introduction
Arie de Geus, who ran strategic planning at Royal Dutch Shell, has a famous quote that has always resonated with me:
"The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage."
I think the line is valuable for any industry, and any business, but I constantly think about it in the context of ag retail.
The product options of your competitors are largely the same as yours — two retailers can sell a grower the identical program at nearly identical margin. What separates them is not the product on the shelf, but what each one knows that the other does not, and how that knowledge turns into a decision and customer influence.
That is an information advantage.
The Insight Is the Edge
Insights are fundamental for the success of any business. In fact, my view is that The Insight is the Edge.
An insight is defined as:
the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing.
This can be into a customer, a technology or a market for example. An insight that is actionable is what differentiates a business. Acting on an insight allows a company to be different and an insight is core to having a unique strategy and winning.
As Michael Porter said in Competitive Strategy:
Underlying the concept of generic strategies is that competitive advantage is at the heart of any strategy, and that achieving advantage requires a firm to make choices. If a firm is to gain advantage, it must choose the type of competitive advantage it seeks to attain and a scope within which it can be attained…The worst strategic error is to be stuck in the middle, or to try simultaneously to pursue multiple strategies. This is a recipe for strategic mediocrity and below-average performance, because pursuing all the strategies simultaneously means that a firm is not able to achieve any of them because of their inherent contradictions.
Insights, in part, come from an information advantage, or at least, a unique interpretation of information.
An information advantage is the raw material. And the most reliable way to manufacture insight your competitor cannot reach is to feed your people and your systems information your competitor does not have.
The question becomes, what does that look like? I look at five areas to drive it.
A Culture of Curiosity
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