1) Providing complementary products or ensuring their availability is important for business success, as complements make the core product more attractive.
2) Traditionally, business strategy focused on direct competition but underplayed the role of complements. Paying attention to complements is necessary in new markets and can provide benefits in established markets.
3) Intel understands the importance of complements and works with partners to develop complementary products and drive demand for its computer chips. Entering complementary businesses requires a different way of accounting that considers combined profitability.
1) Providing complementary products or ensuring their availability is important for business success, as complements make the core product more attractive.
2) Traditionally, business strategy focused on direct competition but underplayed the role of complements. Paying attention to complements is necessary in new markets and can provide benefits in established markets.
3) Intel understands the importance of complements and works with partners to develop complementary products and drive demand for its computer chips. Entering complementary businesses requires a different way of accounting that considers combined profitability.
1) Providing complementary products or ensuring their availability is important for business success, as complements make the core product more attractive.
2) Traditionally, business strategy focused on direct competition but underplayed the role of complements. Paying attention to complements is necessary in new markets and can provide benefits in established markets.
3) Intel understands the importance of complements and works with partners to develop complementary products and drive demand for its computer chips. Entering complementary businesses requires a different way of accounting that considers combined profitability.
1) Providing complementary products or ensuring their availability is important for business success, as complements make the core product more attractive.
2) Traditionally, business strategy focused on direct competition but underplayed the role of complements. Paying attention to complements is necessary in new markets and can provide benefits in established markets.
3) Intel understands the importance of complements and works with partners to develop complementary products and drive demand for its computer chips. Entering complementary businesses requires a different way of accounting that considers combined profitability.
To suceeed in business you have to outsmart the competition,
capture the market make a killing and then bury the competition, right? Well, half right. Competitors arcn't the whole picture. Providing complementary products-or making sure they are available-is the other half of the game. Acomplement to one product is any other product that makes the first one more, rather than les, attractive Hardware and software are complements. So are hot car loans, cable television and TV dogs and mustard, cars and Guide, the Internet and high-capacity digital phone lines, catalogues and overnight delivery services-even red wine and dry cleaners, or Siskel and Ebert. In new markets, is a necessity. Without paying attention to complements key complements, the market may never take off. In estab lished markets, attending to sults. Here, complements has less dramatic but still valuable re- complements most likely exist, but you can make your product more attractive bymaking the complements better, more plentiful and less Traditionally, business strategy has largely focused on expensive. Pepsi-and in the process underplayed complements.competition-Coke versus
word to describe There hasn't even been à
providers of complementary products. So we have created complementor, the natural counterpart to 'competitor'. Although one know your you probady competitors, chances are you have thought less about your mentors. More to the point, do you know which compie Even a great product can sit on the complementors missing are You can't assume that shelf until key complements are developel. the essential be there. And complements to your business are g to if they are missing, you can't assume that problem. You have to work with others to the market will sOIYCthe create them, or create then y Companies involved in today's information revolution this focus on prime candiaa are complements. new sVstem of creating and sharing A is evoiving, and it has many complementary informau part or the new parts. It is not enough to Intel system; you have to pay attention to all the understands this idea, and parts at on pany's engineers have done a provides a lesson for every business. i verful brilliant iob of developing increasingY Case study continucd
commuter chins But the chip is only part of a larger system, and most of us a - rcad havc more processing power than we need to run our favorite application Thus.outpacing conmpeting chip makers 1S not enough: Intel must also engineP demand for its next-generation chips. So Intel is on the lookout for complemen. tors: It has teamed up with MCI to provide more bandwidth for networks. It is working with others to develop interactive games on the World Wide Web. Intel is even venturing outside its core business to ensure that essential complements get off the ground. As desktop videoconferencing for Intel's newest chip, the Pentium Pro. That is takes off, so, too, will demand more than $100 million in why the company has invested is a hundred-year-old developing Proshare, a video-phone product. There analogue to Intel's strategy. At the turn of the century, the car was a technological revolution. But the value of a car-and hence the de- mand for one-was severely limited the by lack of many essential products: roads, gas stations, mechanics and more. The complementary did not leave the fledgling auto makers the Lincoln development of these markets to chance. For example, through Highway Association, they helped promote Entering complementary business requires that a highway construction. ing little differently. You cannot a companies do their account- measure the profitability of the two businesses independently, nor can you demand that each pay its own way. The to ask is whether you are maximizing the right question combined ESSes. For example, subsidizing Proshare makes profitability of the two busl- sense for Intel: Increased $ales r the Pentium Pro will more than make up for anything the conpany on . . . Managing complements is a smarter way of doing business, and there . loses LT SS possibilities. Michelin tires and Michelin Guides; Ikea and ulark cards and in-store reading lasses; play arcas mg and bookstores and coffee Dals. Le tify- assembling complements is often the best way to compete.
