Page 239 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

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232 ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGIES

market did they move out and try to go after both the very big and the
small users.
To use the entrepreneurial judo strategy, one starts out with an
analysis of the industry, the producers and the suppliers, their habits,
especially their bad habits, and their policies. But then one looks at
the markets and tries to pinpoint the place where an alternative strat-
egy would meet with the greatest success and the least resistance.
Entrepreneurial judo requires some degree of genuine innovation.
It is, as a rule, not good enough to offer the same product or the same
service at lower cost. There has to be something that distinguishes it
from what already exists. When the ROLM Company offered a pri-
vate branch exchange—a switchboard for business and office users—
in competition with AT&T, it built in additional features designed
around a small computer. These were not high-tech, let alone new
inventions. Indeed, AT&T itself had designed similar features. But
AT&T did not push them—and ROLM did. Similarly, when Citibank
went into Germany with the Familienbank, it put in some innovative
services which German banks as a rule did not offer to small deposi-
tors, such as travelers checks or tax advice.
It is not enough, in other words, for the newcomer simply to do as
good a job as the established leader at a lower cost or with better serv-
ice. The newcomers have to make themselves distinct.
Like being “Fustest with the Mostest” and creative imitation,
entrepreneurial judo aims at obtaining leadership position and even-
tually dominance. But it does not do so by competing with the lead-
ers—or at least not where the leaders are aware of competitive chal-
lenge or worried about it. Entrepreneurial judo “Hits Them Where
They Ain’t.”