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References: Alternatives & the Competitive Landscape

  1. Competitor Analysis - Wikipedia - Explains the systematic evaluation of existing and potential competitors' strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, the foundation for this chapter's competitive research and competitive analysis concepts.
  2. Substitute Good - Wikipedia - Covers the economic concept of interchangeable products that satisfy the same underlying need, directly relevant to this chapter's substitute solution category of alternative.
  3. Positioning (marketing) - Wikipedia - Describes how a company shapes where its offer sits in a customer's mind relative to rivals, the concept this chapter's competitive positioning builds toward.
  4. Competing Against Luck - Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan - HarperBusiness - Credited for Jobs to Be Done theory and the insight that a venture's real competition is often "non-consumption," which explains why this chapter treats the do-nothing alternative as the toughest competitor.
  5. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors - Michael E. Porter - Free Press - Credited for the Five Forces framework and the systematic method of classifying rivals, substitutes, and market structure that underlies this chapter's direct/indirect/substitute competitor spectrum.
  6. Market Research and Competitive Analysis - U.S. Small Business Administration - Explains how a small business identifies competitors and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses to find a competitive edge, mirroring this chapter's alternative assessment process.
  7. Competitive Analysis - Entrepreneur Small Business Encyclopedia - Defines competitive analysis as identifying competitors and evaluating their strategies to find what makes an offer unique, a plain-language companion to this chapter's competitive landscape mapping.
  8. The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy - Harvard Business Review - Michael Porter's own account of how rivals, substitutes, and new entrants shape industry structure, giving founders the original framework behind this chapter's competitor categories.
  9. The Past and Future of Competitive Advantage - MIT Sloan Management Review - Clayton Christensen's argument that a competitive edge only holds under specific, changing conditions, reinforcing this chapter's point that differentiation must be grounded in a real, confirmed market gap.
  10. Business Model Design for 21st Century Companies - Strategyzer - Shows how Taobao, Michelin, and Airbnb each found an unmet gap in a crowded market and differentiated around it, illustrating this chapter's market gap and differentiation concepts with real companies.