The existence of competition in the market allows for companies to become motivated to increase their profits. It may feel like playing the game of tug of war, however, it is much more complex than that.It's not about being the biggest company, but rather, profitability.

Competition and Profitability

In order to become a profitable company, we must consider the forces that influence profits:<ol><li>Buyers who'd like to pay less but get more</li><li>Suppliers who'd like to earn more but ship less</li><li>Substitutes who don't seem like competition but are</li><li>New entrants who come into the market with competitive pricing making rivals spend more; and</li><li>Existing rivals</li></ol>These five forces define every industry's structure and shape companies' future. By understanding how these five forces work, you'll be able to create more competitive strategies and increase your profits.

The 5 Competitive Forces

Competition makes markets strive to earn more than their counterpart, here, we listed the five forces that influence the competitive market.

Michael Porter’s theory has shaped a generation of academic research and business practice. Understanding the competitive forces, and their underlying causes, reveals the roots of an industry’s current profitability while providing a framework for anticipating and influencing competition (and profitability) over time. A healthy industry structure should be as much a competitive concern to strategists as their company’s own position. Understanding industry structure is also essential to effective strategic positioning. Defending against the competitive forces and shaping them in a company’s favor are crucial to strategy. --------------------------------------------------------------------- At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. So we try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. We enlist the foremost experts in a wide range of topics, including career planning, strategy, leadership, work-life balance, negotiations, innovation, and managing teams. Harvard Business Review empowers professionals around the world to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact. Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters Follow us: https://hbr.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review https://www.facebook.com/HBR/ https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

business

Business

videos

Videos

Michael Porter’s theory has shaped a generation of academic research and business practice.


Understanding the competitive forces, and their underlying causes, reveals the roots of an industry’s current profitability while providing a framework for anticipating and influencing competition (and profitability) over time. A healthy industry structure should be as much a competitive concern to strategists as their company’s own position. Understanding industry structure is also essential to effective strategic positioning. Defending against the competitive forces and shaping them in a company’s favor are crucial to strategy.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
 
At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. So we try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. We enlist the foremost experts in a wide range of topics, including career planning, strategy, leadership, work-life balance, negotiations, innovation, and managing teams. Harvard Business Review empowers professionals around the world to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact.
 
Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters
Follow us:
https://hbr.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review
https://www.facebook.com/HBR/
https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz
https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review

At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. We try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. 

We encourage comments, critiques, and questions. We expect our community to be a safe space for respectful, constructive, and thought-provoking discussion. We reserve the right to remove or turn off comments at our discretion. We do not tolerate bullying, name-calling, or abusive language related to identity, including race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, age, or region; spam; copyright violation; extreme profanity; or pornography. We may also remove content that is overly promotional or off topic.


Harvard Business Review

The Explainer: The 5 Forces That Make Companies Successful

Organisations grow when they develop a base of customers. Businesses profits and political ideas become movements because they built and shaped a group of people by what they do. This is the most important thing an organisation does and the only part you can't outsource.

Growing a customer base

It's doubtful that the first product or service you develop will be precisely what potential customers want. Failure fuels new projects. It is a way to figure out what customers don't want. Most of the time, the innovations an organisation brings to the market is not immediately adopted. Of course, you will have early adopters, but most customers prefer to wait.

Failure moves projects forward

The paradox: Organisations need to be agile and willing to pivot as they engage with an invisible or sceptical market. But, at the same time, ideas don't spread through a market at once. That is why it is important to identify your smallest viable audience. By seeing them and serving them, you can refine your product while establishing conditions for growth.

The smallest viable audience

<ol><li>Your core audience starts to spread to word. You've built the network effect into your offering so that it works better when people tell their friends and colleagues. For example, Twitter and the ice bucket challenge.</li><li>Your success at serving this small but viable audience gives you the team, cash flow, and social proof to find a different set of customers.</li></ol> The hard work of customer development is finding a reason for your customers to bring new customers.

Growth comes from two places

A collection of Insights from marketing mogul's best books, blogs and videos

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

timemanagement

Time Management

7 days with Seth Godin

Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

Customer development

Flow-based note-taking is one of the best ways to consume content meant for learning. The approach followed by Flow notes is pretty straightforward - create notes as you understand it and not how the narrators narrate them.

Flow notes

With this method, you'll be more efficient with time since you learn and take notes simultaneously. Why would you want to take notes for hours and spend more time learning those same notes later? Also, the Flow method encourages active learning, which most of us don't practice enough. When you try to learn things actively and make connections between the information shared, you are much more likely to remember that information.

Advantages of Flow Notes

You can use spaced repetitions to make your notes memorable for the long term. You can also use it in conjunction with another system like the Cornell Method. The goal is not transcribing but rather understanding what is being taught. You need to remember three core ideas with Flow notes:<ol><li>Make your notes simple,</li><li>Make your notes visual,</li><li>Inter-connect you notes.</li></ol>

Implementing Flow Notes

You can start on an empty page where you write the core idea of the session at the center. The next step would be to take down ideas you think are essential, in your own words, in the empty spaces. When you find connections between something earlier to what is being said now, use arrows or lines to connect them. Remember to leave ample space at the beginning while writing down the main ideas.

Using the Flow Note-Taking method

I glance at the topic for the session and take down the sub-headings on the sheet with ample space between them to help me manage space, but you are free to improvise your way. This practice is not for structure but to ensure that I don't run out of writing space for any particular topic. Finally, once I'm done with the notes, I will take the latest information and connect it back to the core idea. Back connecting helps me zoom out a bit and put my learnings into a story format.

My system for Flow Notes

This is a good technique to try for active learning.

Flow Notes can be a valuable tool if you are interested in active learning. If you liked this blog post, consider following us on LinkedIn & Twitter, we post similar content there as well.

writing

Reading & Writing

education

Learning & Education

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Beginner's Guide to The Flow Notes Method

<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">You don't need to be an expert to share your work. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Become a documentarian of what you do.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Take people behind the scenes.</li></ol>

Share something small everyday

<ol><li>Attract an audience with similar interests for fellowship, feedback, and patronage.</li><li>Find your scenius — a group of like-minded people supporting each other and contributing ideas</li><li>Take advantage of the network instead of wasting time "networking".</li></ol>

Benefits of Sharing

"Put yourself, and your work, out there every day, and you'll start meeting some amazing people."

Austin Kleon's 'Show Your Work!' changed the way I documented my process and shared something small every day to my audience as a content creator in the early stages. 

In his New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon showed readers how to unlock their creativity by “stealing” from the community of other movers and shakers. Now, in an even more forward-thinking and necessary book, he shows how to take that critical next step on a creative journey—getting known. Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery—let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive. In chapters such as You Don’t Have to Be a Genius; Share Something Small Every Day; and Stick Around, Kleon creates a user’s manual for embracing the communal nature of creativity— what he calls the “ecology of talent.” From broader life lessons about work (you can’t find your voice if you don’t use it) to the etiquette of sharing—and the dangers of oversharing—to the practicalities of Internet life (build a good domain name; give credit when credit is due), it’s an inspiring manifesto for succeeding as any kind of artist or entrepreneur in the digital age.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

creativity

Creativity

books

Books

In his New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon showed readers how to unlock their creativity by “stealing” from the community of other movers and shakers. Now, in an even more forward-thinking and necessary book, he shows how to take that critical next step on a creative journey—getting known. Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery—let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive. In chapters such as You Don’t Have to Be a Genius; Share Something Small Every Day; and Stick Around, Kleon creates a user’s manual for embracing the communal nature of creativity— what he calls the “ecology of talent.” From broader life lessons about work (you can’t find your voice if you don’t use it) to the etiquette of sharing—and the dangers of oversharing—to the practicalities of Internet life (build a good domain name; give credit when credit is due), it’s an inspiring manifesto for succeeding as any kind of artist or entrepreneur in the digital age.

I’m a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures. Author of Steal Like An Artist and other bestsellers. Visit my website: http://austinkleon.com/

Austin Kleon

Show Your Work!

A new set of evidence-based practice guidelines for the treatment of patients with <a href="https://www.psychcongress.com/coe/schizophrenia">schizophrenia</a> has been released by the American Psychiatric Association, with the goal of reducing the significant consequences the disorder has on individuals. Here, Laura J. Fochtmann, MD, MBI, a member of the practice guidelines writing group, shares some insights into the guidelines and how they may impact clinical practice, and discusses future research needs related to schizophrenia.<a href="https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890424841">Full Version online download page</a>

New Practice Guidelines Aim to Reduce Harmful Consequences of Schizophrenia

Outlines practice guidelines related to treatments of persons with schizophrenia, and provide future research directions

Laura J. Fochtmann, MD, MBI, shares insights on a new set of evidence-based practice guidelines for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia, which she helped write. 
Schizophrenia Q&As

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

health

Health

mentalhealth

Mental Health

<ul><li>Good time management requires competence in four key areas. </li><li>Don't underestimate the toll that poor time management can take on one's career and personal relationships. </li><li>Understanding the cause of one's poor time management can help identify the tips most likely to improve it. </li> </ul>

Significance of managing time effectively

A Harvard Business Review <a href="http://hbr.org/2020/01/time-management-is-about-more-than-life-hacks">summary of the literature </a>on <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/time-management">time management </a>describes three components of the good time manager:<ul><li>Awareness: reasonably estimating how long something will take</li><li>Arrangement: listing, prioritizing, and tracking <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/motivation">goals </a>and specific tasks</li><li>Adaptation: adjusting to interruptions and changing priorities</li><li>Respect: care for the people who will be affected by yourtime management.</li></ul>

Components of good time manager

The Short-Time Guessing Game: Set the timer for two minutes. Check it when you think it’s been 30 seconds and again at 90 seconds. Repeat that until you can always get fairly close. The Longer-Time Guessing Game: For your next few activities, write your estimate of how long you think each task will take. For example: <ul><li>Drive to work: 45 minutes </li><li>Get ready to begin the first task: 15 minutes </li><li>Answer email: 20 minutes </li><li>Write the first draft of the report: 90 minutes </li> </ul>Now, log how long the tasks actually took. Keep playing that guessing game until your estimates are usually within 10 to 20 percent.

Awareness

Some of my clients have adopted my system for keeping track of to-dos. My time-sensitive to-dos (for example, client appointments) go in my week-at-a-glance calendar. Anything I want to do in the next day or two but needn’t be done at a specific time goes on a 3x3 memo cube. Both sit on my desk, and I check them often during the day. If I didn’t work at home, I’d use my phone’s Google Calendar for the time-delimited to-dos and Apple Notes for my not-time-delimited to-dos. Of course, you have to get in the habit of both writing all your to-dos and checking that list throughout the day.

Arrangement

Often, we become aware of a task that’s a higher priority than the task we’re doing. Too often, we reflexively decide to defer the higher-priority task because we want closure on the task we’re working on. Or we defer the more important task because the current one is more pleasurable. Or we get distracted by a thought or by someone. That can tempt us to take a minute to indulge the distraction. Alas, too often, the distraction lasts far longer than we realize. The goal is to consciously, not reflexively, decide whether it’s <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/wisdom">wise </a>to complete your current task before reprioritizing.

Adaptation

Time-management problems might derive from insufficient respect for the victims of their poor time management. Most people don’t intentionally disrespect their victims. Usually, they just haven’t written it on their to-do list or don’t check the list often enough. Or they enjoy trying to cram in so much before their appointments that they’re late.What helps is to put yourself in the victims’ shoes.From a pragmatic perspective, it may also help to remember that disrespect may take a toll on one’s <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/career">career </a>and personal life.

Respect

Found some great insight on time-management, something that I really struggled with. 

...and suggestions for how to deal with each.

productivity

Productivity

4 Causes of Poor Time Management

There are two types of human personality :-1. INTROVERT - A quiet, shy person who prefers to be alone than with other people. 2. EXTROVERT - A person who is confident and full of life and who prefers being with other people than to being alone

Personality Types

Introvert is a person with Qualities of a personality type known as Introversion. Introvert means quiet, alone, shy person who prefers to stay alone. Introverts are:-<ol><li class="ql-align-justify"> Quite/Shy/Silent</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Talks less </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Reflective</li><li class="ql-align-justify"> Self Aware</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Take time in making decisions </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Feel comfortable being alone</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Don't like group work </li><li class="ql-align-justify"> Prefer to write rather than talk </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Feel uncomfortable being in public/ crowd </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Have few friends </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Daydreamer</li><li class="ql-align-justify"> Don't like to go for parties/public places</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Don't like to express their emotions </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Enjoy their loneliness </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Extra ordinary thinker....etc.</li></ol>

INTROVERT 

Introvert are shy and alone. But Researchers have found that Introverts have a higher blood flow to their frontal lobe than extroverts do. This part of the brain helps to remember things, solve problems and plan ahead. Even, the imagination power of Introvert are higher than extroverts. Where as loneliness becomes boring for extroverts while loneliness becomes joyful time and exploring new ideas for Introverts. For Introverts a simple and boring things are also interesting. They love to read books, explore something new and doing something extra ordinary things.

Introversion Benefits 

Introverts are shy and quiet,But never underestimate their Potential. They are better than your imagination.

WHO ARE YOU AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT ??

I'm an introvert.  But not less than an extroverts. 

Introvert

"Loneliness is the point of intersection between our divine roots and our sinful inclinations." -J. Ellsworth Kalas

Experience Is A Good Teacher 

"But our self centeredness gets in the way... of communication...and our own insecurities prevent our being as honest as we should."-J Ellsworth Kalas

Loneliness And Sin 

Sometimes you just act without fully understanding why. That's the universe pulling you in a direction just listen and accept.

Everyone attends the School of Experience, but some learn more than others. Whatever comes our way in life, it is up to us to make the most of it. The lessons are presented; how well we learn them is our choice. In this book, readers will find invaluable insights to equip themselves for the "course of study" ahead. J. Ellsworth Kalas provides a profile of some of the teachers in the School of Experience: Friendship, Regret, Love, Success, Defeat, Enemies, and others. He draws from the lives of saints and sages -- as well as from rogues -- to discover inspiration and insight for today's Christian. The wisdom in this book opens our eyes to the often overlooked subtleties in the lessons of life.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

Everyone attends the School of Experience, but some learn more than others. Whatever comes our way in life, it is up to us to make the most of it. The lessons are presented; how well we learn them is our choice. In this book, readers will find invaluable insights to equip themselves for the "course of study" ahead. J. Ellsworth Kalas provides a profile of some of the teachers in the School of Experience: Friendship, Regret, Love, Success, Defeat, Enemies, and others. He draws from the lives of saints and sages -- as well as from rogues -- to discover inspiration and insight for today's Christian. The wisdom in this book opens our eyes to the often overlooked subtleties in the lessons of life.

J. Ellsworth Kalas

If Experience Is Such a Good Teacher, Why Do I Keep Repeating the Course? with Study Guide

If Experience is Such a Good Teacher, why Do I Keep Repeating the Course?

At this time of the year, almost every year, I start thinking about all the changes I want to make in the next. You know the usual: stay fit, walk closer with God, develop myself, blah blah blah. Some days I’m a bit more specific: Read 10 books, take a vacation, save $5,000. No matter how specific I am, those dreams don’t come to pass and I come back here in December, writing new goals…again. It became tiring. I stopped planning for the new year. I’d just go with the flow you know? Take the opportunities as they come.

It’s A Scam! Don’t Fall For It!

This year was different. Rather than shoving my dreams and fantasies under the carpet and pretending like I could live without them I’ve decided not to wait for 2022. It could come or maybe we could all get raptured on 31st. Who knows?🤷🏽‍♀️ (half kidding) I decided to try something new. Let’s make those 2022 plans. And then let’s start now. Maybe do a test run.

Start Now

I know I want to spend more time writing. Instead of waiting to start writing in 2022, I will start today. Write each day starting now. By the end of the year I would have written at least 15 articles. I want to read and learn more next year. So instead of waiting to start reading and learning next year, I will go ahead and pick out some books and courses today. If I start this year, I should have covered some ground even before 2022 begins.

Get A Head Start, Cover Some Ground

By now you get the drift. To be able to efficiently pull off all your 2022 goals, start test running them now. Look at it as an MVP (minimum viable product). Start doing the minimum; one little thing that is super close to the actual goal. If the goal is to read 100pages a day in 2022, start reading 20 a day and build up from there. If the goal is to get 30 minutes of exercise in every morning, start doing at least 10 minutes today. Don’t put it off till 2022. There’s three things starting now will do for you:

Start Doing The Minimum, Think Of It As An MVP

When you see yourself consistently working towards that goal now, it increases your desire to go after it hard in 2022. You get motivated to continue and work harder at it in the next year. You see it’s possible, so you go for it.

Motivation

My friend sent me a video today with the title “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu-WuJtOl0c">Winners Need Discipline, Not Motivation </a>” and it struck a nerve! To win, you have to consistently learn and do that thing you want to win at. No amount of motivation will make you win; only discipline will. Starting now will help you form that habit. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. Guess how many days you have till the year ends? 🤷🏽‍♀️ Start now, be disciplined this month; form that habit and watch yourself soar in 2022.

Discipline 

Imagine writing everyday till the year ends. Practice makes perfect. The more you write, the more you learn. Being intentional and taking time out to research, think and put these in your own words; you just set yourself on a path to finding your voice, your own unique style. It’s the same with learning to code or learning to play the sax. Start now, and before you know it, you’re the best at what you do. No need to wait till the new year comes.

Become A Pro

I’m throwing out the challenge: Start working towards whatever it is you have planned for the next year. Don’t wait for 2022. Start now with the barest minimum and build up the momentum for the next year. Let’s end this year well 💪🏽

It’s Your Turn! Work Towards Your Dreams Now

This is for all those who aren’t ready for the new year and for you too if you’ve already drawn out your New Years resolutions! Let’s start, shall we?

At this time of the year, almost every year, I start thinking about all the changes I want to make in the next. You know the usual: stay fit, walk closer with God, develop myself, blah blah blah…

habits

Habits

Don’t wait for 2022…

Life is like a piano. The white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness. But as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also make music.

communication

Communication

Life is like a piano...

Find  Self Improvement Tips - Curated from popular Books like Atomic Habits, 48 Rules of Power, Deep Work, Rich Dad Poor Dad and way more!