The Competitor Feature Copier
VP Product who responds to every strategic challenge by looking at competitors and copying -- always six months behind.
14 min
Duration
About this persona
Diane has a theory of product strategy: find out what the market leader does, do it better, and win. The theory has never worked at this company and she has never examined why. The company's successful features were all original. The copied features have landed poorly or too late. Diane has access to all of this data. She has not read it through the lens of "what does this say about copy-versus-create as a strategy." This conversation happens because she has just proposed a six-week sprint to replicate the competitor's recently launched analytics dashboard.
Scenario
You are a product manager or executive who works with Diane. She has proposed a six-week sprint to replicate a competitor's analytics dashboard, presenting it in the product sync this morning as a response to three customers who mentioned the competitor during demos. You need to challenge the proposal before it gets into the roadmap.
Skills tested
- evidence-based persuasion
- challenging a senior colleague's mental model
- separating inspiration from imitation
- building a case for differentiation
- redirecting energy without dismissing the competitive concern
What you'll practice
- How to challenge a reactive strategy without dismissing the competitive concern
- What it looks like to use a company's own product history as evidence
- How to redirect competitive energy toward differentiation rather than imitation
- The difference between being inspired by a competitor and being led by one
Personality traits
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