When you look for big competitive advantages on the cost side, it is usually about economies of scale – when a company with a larger volume has a lower per unit cost. Or, to be more precise, when a company has… …lower per unit costs based on a higher volume of production or throughput being […]
The Didi financials are finally out. And they are an interesting mix of good and bad. Didi has market dominance and tech leadership in the largest market for shared mobility. But it is also chronically unprofitable. For investors, this could be a fantastic opportunity. Because Didi’s ongoing losses will scare off investors and likely lower […]
The Didi financials are finally out. And they are an interesting mix of good and bad. Didi has market dominance and tech leadership in the largest market for shared mobility. But it is also chronically unprofitable. For investors, this could be a fantastic opportunity. Because Didi’s ongoing losses will scare off investors and likely lower […]
Digital transformation and disruption are usually about attacking the cost structures of established business models. Software companies have long used digital economics to devastate traditional companies. When Marc Andreesen says “software eats the world”, he is mostly talking about costs. But as soon as you talk costs, everyone jumps to “economies of scale”. These are […]
Network effects are the brass ring of the digital age. Companies and investors, especially venture capitalists, are actively reaching for them. And, like platform business models, they can have multiple important effects. Creating surprisingly durable competitive advantages is one of them. First some general comments and then I’ll go into three types of network effects. […]
Strategy thinking has traditionally been focused on linear processes that create mostly tangible products and services. It’s a legacy of the industrial age when everything was mass production and assembly lines. Virtually every business model was a concentration of activities and assets to create value for one user group, which we call the customer. These […]
Take-Away 1: With reports of +1,000 new products being added to Shein every day, there is a lot of speculation that this is a newer, faster version of fast fashion. That may be true in the future. But today, Shein’s growth appears to be mostly from offering really low-priced apparel to Gen Z women on […]
I wrote about Alibaba’s 11 growth strategies in the fall of 2020. At their investors day, management laid them out in pretty good detail. You can see my write-up at: Dissecting Alibaba’s 11 Growth Strategies. From Investor Day 2020 (pt 1 of 2). (Jeff’s Asia Tech Class – Daily Lesson / Update) This is my […]
There is a lot to like about Alibaba (from a strategy and competition perspective). Massive, almost unprecedented, competitive strength. It’s a complementary platform and a digital-physical hybrid. That puts it at the top of my competitive strength pyramid. It is riding the mother of all secular trends – the rising wealth of Chinese families. And […]
Sea Limited is rocking and rolling. Jumping from gaming to ecommerce. Then to payment and financial services. And now to Mexico. There is a growing public consensus that the Sea management team is extraordinarily effective. That’s cool. But it would have been much better to know that two years ago, when the stock was much […]