This article is the introduction to the MDM series: The Shifting Competitive Landscape.
Most have heard the classic tale of Blockbuster, once the king of the video rental market, not responding to online rental service Netflix until it was too late. Or Sony’s failure to recognize the shift to digital music from tapes and CDs, moving Apple into mobile music market leadership with the iPod.
These stories remain some of the clearest examples of what can happen when your competitive focus is too narrow.
No company should outright ignore its traditional and long-standing competitors. But an ever-increasing pace of change, thanks in part to technology, dictates that distributors
