Acerca da concorrência imperfeita

Roger Martin em "Is Strategy a Zero-Sum Game?", publicado no final de Dezembro passado, toca vários temas clássicos deste blogue.

"The first critique I get is that my insistence on pursuing a winning strategy is just too aggressive. The thought is that if the organization I am encouraging to win manages to figure out how to win, then someone else will lose in a zero-sum game in which society is no better off. [Moi ici: Gente que não conhece as toutinegras de MacArthur ou as paramécias de Gause, gente que continua no século XX e ainda pensa numa paisagem competitiva com um único pico] 

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[Moi ici: Agora até o tema da concorrência perfeita ele mete ao barulho] Economists love ‘perfect competition.’ [Moi ici: A malta da tríade, lembram-se? Ainda ontem escrevi sobre eles] This is when numerous competitors compete in a given space — what I would call a particular Where-to-Play (WTP) ... Without competition, a monopoly provider would set price at B (the volume at which marginal revenue and marginal cost are equal) and the market would clear at a lower volume. Hence fewer customers would benefit from the offering, and all would pay a higher price than under vigorous competition. Thus, the absence of vigorous competition in this WTP results in a deadweight cost to society.

Thus, economists don’t like winning either! They dream of having competition in a given space look like this, in which (for example) six competitors duke it out in almost identical WTPs, approximating perfect competition. Nobody wins — they just play.

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[Moi ici: Entra a concorrência imperfeita] My Dream is industries that evolve like the following:[Moi ici: Como não recordar o Senhor dos Perdões]

Customers are heterogeneous and when I think about a company’s WTP, I think of it as a circle with the customer who thinks the company’s offering is absolutely perfect, and hence puts the highest value on it, at the center of the company’s WTP circle.

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In My Dream, rather than compete head-to-head with the same WTPs and same/similar HTWs, the six competitors spread out and reduce their overlap. Each competitor wins in a somewhat different WTP. Many more customers get an offering that is perfect for them. Competition happens — but it the boundary territories at the intersections of the individual WTPs, rather than across each competitor’s entire WTP. That ensures that while the competition won’t be as intense as in the Economist’s Dream, it will still be meaningful.[Moi ici: É isto que as toutinegras de MacArthur ilustram]

If each company pursues a winning strategy in its carefully defined WTP, each can prosper and achieve a level of profitability that enables it to innovate and move the market forward on behalf of its customers. [Moi ici: O meu clássico "Viver e deixar viver"]

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Playing to win isn’t zero-sum or obsolete. It is the most positive sum thing that you can do. Winning sets up a competitive dynamic that makes customers, employees, communities, and investors better off over time and opens up possibilities for rather than works against productive partnerships."