Shape the Market Before the Fight Begins

"Too often they represent successful attempts by competitors to shape the marketplace—customers “want” something because a competitor has offered it to them. Every government and many commercial requests for proposal, for example, contain a “statement of work” (SOW) describing in some detail what the customer wants. The question is, who wrote the SOW?"

"What they actually do is try to design cars people want to buy, and then the production system will build them faster, with better quality, and at lower cost than the competition. It is the job of top management to sense what the public wants to buy, even if the public doesn’t realize it, yet."

"Keep Your Focus on Shaping the Marketplace This means that you want to be the one who defines and continues to define what “new and desirable” means. You will extract the industry’s highest margins and often make money even when the market is bad. Because you won’t be so much at the mercy of lenders and the markets, you can preserve your capacity for independent action, survive on your own terms, and, as Toyota insisted, take control of your own destiny."

"With a strategy this powerful, your aim is not to respond to but to create the market conditions that you want."