Thread by @swardley

X : You often talk about counter plays, can you give me an example?
Me : How about a counter play to ILC?
X : ILC?
Me : Innovate - Leverage - Commoditise, a type of gameplay.
X : Don’t know it.
Me : Oh, tricky. Let us start with a value chain [A] for an application to some need.

… now let us pretend we have taken the decision to move compute from a product to a utility [A] because all the signals and factors tell us that it’s ready to change.
X : Signals? Factors?
Me : Another conversation. Let us pretend our gut feel has told us.

…. so compute is a utility [A] which we use in our internal value chain. But we also decide to expose this as an API so others can build on top. This might include thousands of things i.e. people building “big data” systems [B] which we might use to unrelated applications [C, D]

X : A bit like Amazon?
Me : Yes, a bit like AWS.
X : This is a revenue play?
Me : Oh, it’s so much more.
X : How do we counter play?
Me : Hold your horses. One sep at a time.

… let us assume that some of things built on top are new concepts [A] but the “big data” [B] area is rapidly growing.
X : Flight booking is not new?
Me : Purely illustrative.
X : How do we know that “big data” is growing?
Me : Consumption data [C] of our component service.

… the ecosystem building on top of our component, and I use the symbol [A], is simply a sensor of future change. It will hopefully contain many organisations that are innovating, and many components that are rapidly growing and evolving.
X : How does this help us?

Me : Do you remember the ideas that a company should focus on one of innovation, customer focus or efficiency?
X : Yes
Me : That was broken in 2005. You can grow all three simultaneously and in an exponential way.
X : How?

Me : The ILC model. Read chapter 5 - medium.com/wardleymaps/th…
… the ecosystem innovates, you mine the meta data (i.e. consumption) to spot future patterns which you commoditise to new components.

Innovation, customer focus and efficiency grow with the size of ecosystem.

… so returning to our map, we commoditise “big data” (to the howls of “they’ve eaten my business model” and move “up the stack” [A]. We now have two components providing information feeds [B] on what the ecosystem [C] (source of future change) is doing.
X : How do you stop it?

Me : Let us assume a competitor [A] is running this game and you’re even using the competitor in your stack. The factors, weak signals tell you that platform is ready to become commodity like [B]
X : Signals?
Me : Ok, your gut feel. What you do is turn [B] into a utility service.

… what you try to do is cut of your competitor from these information feeds by getting everyone else to build on top of you. All your competitor [A] sees is you growing and a lesser set of future sensors. You start playing ILC [B] on top of their stack. That's your counter play

X : Anyone do this?
Me : I advised Pivotal / Cloud Foundry to do this long ago. Create a market of public platform providers on top of AWS.
X : Did they?
Me : Not really. They got sucked into containers. AWS launched Lambda years later and now owns that part of the stack.

X : Containers are the future.
Me : Dead duck, an invisible subsystem. NB you’re not competing against AWS but the ecosystem. Those feeds of information enable it to outstrip anyone.
X : Container ecosystem is large.
Me : Irrelevant if no-one is capturing and using those feeds.

… the ecosystem of suppliers, providers and users was huge in computing infrastructure. No-one had the feeds except through expensive marketing. AWS ripped through the industry with a set of utility services. It was all predictable, I did try and warn people back in 2006-2008.

X : You counter play not by fighting but by moving up the stack and cutting of sources of information?
Me : I’m impressed.
X : How do you do that today?
Me : Look at the landscape, look above where the competitor is playing. Find the thing which can be used as the “next layer”.

X : Any suggestions?
Me : No, you’ll need to find it for yourself. I’ve given you enough already. Learn to play chess for yourself. With a bit of practice this becomes easier.
X : Does Amazon use mapping.
Me : No. But some people there do.

#wardleymaps.

X : How do you know if a particular play will work?
Me : You don't. You have to be adaptive and counter opponents move. The beauty of maps is you can apply a gameplay to a landscape and learn what works, what doesn't.
X : What's the fastest way to learn mapping?
Me : Practice.

X : Are there other ways of countering ILC?
Me : Yes i.e. with a larger ecosystem, with a game of last man standing (tough one that), by co-opting ... there are all sorts of different plays. As you get better with maps and strategy then you'll use multiple plays at the same time.

X : This is all very complex.
Me : No really. It's just unfamiliar to most. Lots of people who talk about strategy have never looked at the landscape in any systematic manner. What they do is barely strategy, it's more gut feel, meme copying and magic frameworks.

... I suppose a good comparison would be to Chess. It might look complex to those who have never played the game but it becomes easier with practice. And if you've never seen the game or played it then strategy is fairly pointless as it's based upon nothing or platitudes.

X : Platitudes?
Me : Yes. We need to be innovative or efficient or customer focused. Mix this with memes and you can autogenerate most "strategy" - strategy-madlibs.herokuapp.com .. just keep refreshing until you find one you like.

X : You wouldn't recommend using that strategy generator though, would you?
Me : It has an advantage of being vastly cheaper than using some very expensive strategy consultancy firms.