353: Porter's Five Forces and Learning Business Competition
Apr 18, 2023
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Exploring competition in the learning business, hosts highlight Porter's Five Forces, importance of differentiation, brand loyalty, and supporting subject matter experts. Strategies for staying ahead include creating unique value propositions, understanding buyer negotiation power, and assessing the competitive landscape.
Periodically revisiting strategy is crucial for learning businesses to stay competitive in the evolving landscape.
Understanding and catering to buyer preferences can reduce the threat of substitutes and increase market share.
Deep dives
Understanding the Evolving Competitive Landscape
Competition is a significant concern for learning businesses, with the competitive landscape constantly changing. The podcast emphasizes the importance of evaluating the competitive environment periodically to ensure business survival and success. Discussion revolves around the evolving nature of lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development sectors, highlighting the need for ongoing focus on competition.
Utilizing Blue Ocean Strategy and Michael Porter's Five Forces
The podcast explores strategies like Blue Ocean Strategy, aiming to make competition irrelevant by offering unique value propositions. Additionally, the focus shifts towards Michael Porter's classic model, the Five Forces, which identifies key competitive drivers like the threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, buyers, substitutes, and existing rivals. These models guide learning businesses in understanding and positioning themselves within their market.
Addressing the Threat of New Entrants
New learning businesses can easily enter the market due to technological advancements, posing a real threat for existing players. The podcast suggests businesses should consider how easily others could start competing in their space and emphasize the importance of standing out through differentiation, branding, and loyalty to retain market share.
Managing Buyer Power and Substitution Threats
Buyers, including employers and individual learners, hold significant power in decision-making, influencing enrollment and participation in learning experiences. The episode discusses the importance of understanding buyer preferences, segmenting markets, and creating offerings that emphasize distinctiveness to reduce the threat of substitutes. Strategies like micro-learning and alternate credentials can help in this competitive landscape.
Competition is a significant issue for most learning businesses, and, because the lifelong learning landscape is constantly evolving, the competitive landscape is also constantly shifting, making it critical for every learning business to periodically revisit its strategy to remain relevant and competitive.
In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb highlight five forces driving competition for learning businesses using the framework first described by Michael Porter in his classic 1979 Harvard Business Review article.
We are grateful to our sponsor for this episode Thinkific.
***
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