A common response to a competitor’s business success is to try to imitate that success and to immediately jump in with both feet—often by adding the new service to existing services. But this response can be disastrous; the common result is that instead of doing one thing really well, you end up doing a lot of things in a mediocre way.

The correct way to do any type of product or service introduction is to stop—before you do anything—and ask the question: “How am I going to establish sustainable competitive advantage if I enter this arena?”

Too often, we jump into product or service market sin which we have no business because we read about another company’s success and assume that if they can do it, we can, too. How many printers have digital color printing devices that are running at less than 50% capacity? How many printers bought hardware and software or wrote applications because a customer told them that a competitor was offering a solution, but they’d rather buy from them if they could offer the same thing?