Will Your Competitive Advantage Work in Other Markets?
When building a business, the critical first step is to develop a strategy that resonates with your market. But once you’ve crafted that winning strategy, what does it take to successfully translate it into new markets?
When companies expand overseas, they often assume the competitive advantages that have made them successful in their home countries will seamlessly transfer into new global markets. And indeed, this can sometimes be the case. For example, Sequoia’s existing brand resonated well with Indian entrepreneurs, and so its expansion into the Indian market required minimal adaption. Similarly, Intel has achieved lucrative returns selling semiconductors to customers in China because its chip design and manufacturing technology is hard for competitors to replicate.
However, not all competitive advantages translate quite so smoothly.