Understanding Divergent Thinking in Product Management

Let’s start with an example that explains the importance of competitor analysis. 

• Suppose Jason is a young man who loves cooking. He has won many amateur contests and dreams of becoming a chef.
   

• He decides to start a vegan food delivery service; there appears to be a huge demand for vegan food, he reckons. And while there are plenty of full-service restaurants and takeout outlets in his area, not a single one specializes in vegan cuisine. He believes his idea is unique and says he has a “good feeling” about it. Ignoring better advice, he decides to not conduct a competitor analysis.
   

• He has put together a small menu and has minimal overheads, and his business does well for the first couple of months. But then the restaurants nearby begin to take notice. They acknowledge the demand for vegan cuisine, and, eventually, Jason’s competitors launch their own separate vegan menus in addition to their regular fare.
   

• The competition had to make a negligible investment to create a vegan menu. With years of food delivery experience, they were able to price their food items much cheaper, offer a large variety in their menu, and deliver faster. In less than 6 months, Jason had to shut his business down, while the competition was still thriving.
   

• Had Jason performed a thorough competitor analysis, he could have anticipated these eventualities and started considering how he would address any moves that his competitors might make.

In the previous session, you learned about the 5W1H framework to analyze your current situation. Let’s use the same framework for competition analysis.

Diverge means going out all and analyzing all kinds of competitors for your product or service. In this video, you saw how to use the 5W1H framework to analyze Muji's competitors from where, what, who, when, why and how points of view. 
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In the next segment, you will learn about the converging aspect of competitive analysis.

Additional Reading

Double diamond framework: This article discusses the 4 D’s of the double diamond framework and how it helps ease the design thinking process.