Strategy
Play the right competitive game
When a rival's move unsettles the market, read the game and the industry's attractiveness; then choose the right offensive, defensive, or new-space move.
Your learning route
The program order
Complete the programs in order to finish the route. Each one brings short lessons, applied practice and a realistic business case together.
Plus and Pro members can create a verifiable Stratify certificate when the route is complete.
- Program 01
Competitor analysis: reading the game and its players
Foundational: you learn to read competition as a dynamic game rather than a one-way plan. By the end of this program you can inventory your own marketing arsenal as resources and capabilities, map the competitive field with a strategic group map, define your competitors without falling into marketing myopia, and assess your own competitive advantage from the customer's point of view.
- Competition is a dynamic game
- Your marketing arsenal: resources and capabilities
- Mapping the competitive landscape
Apply it: Case: Copperkettle Coffee's competitive review
7 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 02
Choosing the right game: industry attractiveness and new spaces
Intermediate: you learn how to choose where to play. By the end of this program you can break a market down with the PARTS framework, judge an industry's profit potential with the six forces, recognize game types such as the prisoner's dilemma, and design the move from a red ocean to a blue one.
- The PARTS framework
- Game types and the prisoner's dilemma
- The six forces that govern an industry
Apply it: Case: which game should Halverson Power play?
8 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 03
Playing the game right: offensive and defensive moves
Advanced: you learn how to win on the field you have already chosen. By the end of this program you can pick offensive moves that fit your market position (comparative advertising, first-mover entry, imitation, price, differentiation), hold on to existing customers with the defensive repertoire, stay out of a destructive price war, and use the underdog effect as a small brand.
- The logic of attack and comparative advertising
- First mover, imitation and price
- Differentiation and the features arms race
Apply it: Case: Trailsmith Gear against Marchmont Athletic
7 lessons · ≈3 hours