J. A. Konrath Quotes

Even if someone is already in your market space, ask yourself whether you can approach it from a different angle and thereby secure your own customer base.

If all you're trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it's unlikely that you'll be very successful.

Be careful not to start a company that really belongs as a feature of another company, like the 25 Twitter URL shortener companies out there. Pick a real problem that's here to stay.

If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.

When similar products are on store shelves, price competition is inevitable. Nintendo has been trying to steer clear of that direction and create a market of our own.

It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.

You either have to be first, best, or different.

Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It's not a matter of being better at what you do - it's a matter of being different at what you do.

OLD: Be No.1 or No.2 in Your Market. NEW: Find a Niche, Create Something New.

The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.

We, we - as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

The essential element of successful strategy is that it derives its success from the differences between competitors with a consequent difference in their behavior.

If you have a business idea that's extremely easy to copy, that can often become something of a challenge or problem.

When you can't compete on cost, compete on quality.

You need to understand the market, know how you can differentiate yourself in it, and grasp the price and the functional differentiation competitive points that are going to allow you to be disruptive.

Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard.

When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.

And you know, I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

If you want to be promoted into the first league of carmakers, then you can't just follow suit.

I think the idealism has always been marketing. Even back in the early days of Apple and the 'pirate' mentality, they were building a computer that they wanted to differentiate from IBM and Microsoft.

If you are a small company taking on a big company, you need to have a sense of humor.

We've got a great value proposition against Chromebooks, we are not ceding the market to anyone.

Our employees and competitors thought we were docile. We want to be defiantly disruptive. I don't mean necessarily by launching price wars but by being the best at the basics - having the best customer service, the best on-time performance, the best coffee - in a thoughtful, not a testosterone-laced, way.

I thought to myself, 'What can I do that Amazon can't replicate?' I wanted to do something Amazon couldn't do, and something that I absolutely loved.

We've found that the more niche you are, the better off you are.