deanpeters/competitive-analysis-process

Competitive Analysis Process

Purpose

Orchestrate rigorous, repeatable competitive analysis across six analytical steps, producing four actionable output types (battle cards, comparison matrices, positioning counter-moves, threat assessments). This is the umbrella: each step names its purpose, its frameworks, and the skill that does the work — the way discovery-process orchestrates the discovery skills. Run all six for a strategy cycle; run one when a specific question walks in the door. The steps build on each other, but the sequence bends to the decision.

Input

Works best with: the market or competitor set in scope, and the decision this analysis supports — a roadmap bet, a positioning refresh, a market entry, deal defense. The decision determines which steps get depth and which get a pass. Also useful: any existing intelligence — a prior landscape scan, snapshots, battle cards, or company-intel output — so steps consume rather than repeat it.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The workflow opens by asking what decision is on the table and what you already know, then recommends which steps to run and in what order.

Example invocation: Run the competitive analysis process on the mid-market payroll space — decision: whether we defend down-market or push up. We have last quarter's landscape scan.

Key Concepts

• Six steps, four outputs. The steps are analytical lenses; the outputs (battle cards, comparison matrices, positioning moves, threat assessments) are what sales, execs, and roadmap owners actually consume. A step that doesn't feed an output is a detour.
• Steps delegate; this skill orchestrates. Each step below names the skill that does the work. This file holds the sequence, the frameworks, and the decision points — not the research mechanics.
• Evidence discipline throughout. Every step honors the autonomous-investigation protocol (Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, real URLs, confidence stacking), drawing signals from the channels in intelligence-collection-disciplines.
• Named frameworks, cited. Each step stands on published strategy work — Porter's Five Forces, the Kano model, Jobs-to-be-Done, the Business Model Canvas, Ries & Trout positioning, Hamel & Prahalad strategic intent. The frameworks are defined where used; agents shouldn't assume prior knowledge.
• Present ≠ future. Steps 1-5 read where competitors are; Step 6 reads where they're going — and it's the step most teams skip, which is why they're perpetually surprised.

Application

Step 0 — Scope. Confirm the decision, the competitor set (or run market-landscape-scan to find it), and which steps matter. Offer the six steps as a numbered menu; recommend a subset when the decision doesn't need all six.

Step 1: Overview of the Competitive Landscape

Who's in the game, where, and how they operate — market saturation, fragmentation, disruptive entrants.

• Frameworks: Porter's Five Forces (industry structure); strategic group mapping (clustering competitors by GTM model, innovation pattern, or regional depth); market fragmentation indexing.
• Run: market-landscape-scan — segments, player map, dynamics, whitespace with the dead-zone test.
• Decision point: which 2-4 players deserve depth? Everything downstream narrows to them.

Step 2: Comparisons at the Product Level

Beyond feature lists: value delivery, architecture, interoperability, lifecycle maturity.

• Frameworks: Kano model (which features delight vs. merely satisfy); Geoffrey Moore's Whole Product model (core product vs. the ring of services and integrations deals actually hinge on); JTBD-based capability maps (compare by customer job, not by feature name).
• Run: competitive-research-snapshot on the selected players — its comparison matrix is this step's artifact.
• Watch for: feature parity theater. A capability map by job-to-be-done exposes what a feature checklist hides: two "identical" features serving different jobs badly.

Step 3: Ability to Fulfill Customer Needs

How well they serve real customers — outcomes, support quality, ecosystem benefits — not tech specs.

• Frameworks: Outcome-Driven Innovation (score against customer-defined outcomes); Value Proposition Canvas (their promise vs. the jobs/pains/gains that matter).
• Run: voice-of-customer-miner across the sources your buyer reads — need themes, quoted verbatims, competitor weak points, and switching triggers, each with a source-bias note.
• Watch for: vendor-authored "reviews" and case studies. Independent complaint clusters are the signal; curated success stories are marketing.

Step 4: Compilation of Business Information

The financial, organizational, and market baseline: structure, revenue streams, growth levers, channels.

• Frameworks: Business Model Canvas (how the whole machine fits together); revenue stream breakdown; sales channel profiling (direct vs. OEM vs. VAR vs. platform).
• Run: company-intel per deep-dive competitor — its eleven-section output (financials, offers, org signals) is this step's artifact; FININT sources per intelligence-collection-disciplines do the heavy lifting.
• Watch for: press-release accounting. Filings and earnings calls outrank announcements — companies lie less where lying is a felony.

Step 5: Perception and Relative Positioning

How buyers perceive you versus them — in promise, emotion, and mental association, not capability.

• Frameworks: Ries & Trout positioning theory (the battle is for the buyer's mind); perceptual mapping (price vs. value-perception plots; find the uncontested space); Blue Ocean strategy canvas.
• Run: contrast their stated positioning (Step 2 snapshots) against customer language (Step 3 review mining); draft or revise with positioning-statement.
• Watch for: the promise-delivery gap — where a competitor's marketing writes checks their reviews say they don't cash. That gap is a positioning counter-move waiting to be claimed.

Step 6: Competitors' Strategic Direction

Where they're going, not where they are — the step that lets you preempt instead of react.

• Frameworks: Hamel & Prahalad's strategic intent (read the ambition behind the moves); the Innovation Ambition Matrix (core/adjacent/transformational mix of their bets).
• Run: the forward-looking disciplines in intelligence-collection-disciplines — TECHINT (patent clusters, trademark filings, preprints), HUMINT (hiring surges, leadership moves), FININT (earnings language, M&A themes), MASINT (supply chain, facility buildout) — fused via the confidence-stacking rule. competitive-intel-watch keeps this step running on a cadence after the initial pass.
• Watch for: single-signal panic. One patent is exploration; a cluster plus a hiring surge plus a subdomain cert is a committed bet. Stack before you brief.

Step 7: Produce the Outputs

Close by building what the audience consumes — offer as a numbered menu:

1. Battle cards for the field — battle-card-builder
2. Executive comparison matrix — from Step 2's snapshot
3. Positioning counter-moves — from Step 5's gap analysis
4. Threat assessment brief — Step 6's fused signals, with confidence levels and recommended responses

Then set the maintenance cadence: competitive-intel-watch on the schedule the artifact mapping in intelligence-collection-disciplines prescribes (weekly SIGINT layer for cards, quarterly deep passes for direction).

A copy/paste engagement tracker for all seven steps lives in template.md.

Examples

Scoping to the decision (fictional): the decision is deal defense against one rival in enterprise deals. The right subset is Steps 2, 3, and 5 on that one competitor, straight into a battle card — Steps 1, 4, and 6 add days, not win-rate. The orchestrator's value is permission to skip: "Based on your decision, I recommend Steps 2→3→5 only. Run the full six?

1. Yes, deal defense scope (2, 3, 5 → battle card)
2. Add Step 6 — they've been acquiring lately and I want the direction read
3. Full six-step pass
4. Something else"

Step 6 catching what Steps 1-5 missed: the present-state read shows a competitor stable and mid-pack. The direction pass finds a patent cluster in a new classification, four platform-engineer postings, and an earnings call where the CFO declined to break out R&D — three disciplines, one story: a platform pivot in progress. The threat assessment brief re-ranks them from "monitor" to "act," a quarter before their announcement would have forced a reactive scramble.

See examples/sample.md for a complete worked engagement (fictional FSM-software market) showing the orchestration decisions — scoping menu, recorded skips, and step-to-step compounding — with links into the delegated skills' own worked artifacts. examples/sample-industrial.md shows the umbrella bending — steps merged, one run out of order, cadence slowed — with each call's reasoning stated.

Common Pitfalls

• Running all six on autopilot. The steps are a menu, not a mandate. Scope to the decision or the analysis ships after the decision got made without it.
• Skipping Step 6. Present-state analysis ages the moment it ships; direction analysis is what buys you a quarter of lead time. Teams that skip it are perpetually surprised on launch day.
• Framework name-dropping. Citing Five Forces without rating the forces, or Kano without classifying a single feature. A framework earns its mention by producing a judgment.
• Analysis without outputs. Six beautiful steps and no battle card, no matrix, no brief. Step 7 isn't optional — research is only done when it names the artifact it changes.
• One-time heroics. A grand annual analysis that's stale by month three. The process ends by installing the watch cadence, or it didn't end — it just stopped.

References

• market-landscape-scan (Workflow) — Step 1
• competitive-research-snapshot (Workflow) — Step 2
• voice-of-customer-miner (Workflow) — Step 3
• company-intel (Workflow) — Step 4
• positioning-statement (Component) — Step 5
• competitive-intel-watch (Workflow) — Step 6 cadence + maintenance
• battle-card-builder (Workflow) — Step 7 output
• intelligence-collection-disciplines (Component) — signal channels throughout
• autonomous-investigation (Workflow) — evidence discipline throughout
• External frameworks: Porter, How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy (HBR, 1979); Kano, attractive quality theory; Moore, Crossing the Chasm (Whole Product); Ulwick, Outcome-Driven Innovation; Osterwalder & Pigneur, Business Model Generation; Ries & Trout, Positioning; Hamel & Prahalad, Competing for the Future (HBR, 1994); Nagji & Tuff, Managing Your Innovation Portfolio (HBR, 2012)
• Adapted from Dean Peters' Competitive Analysis Playbook (Productside).