When devising a business strategy (or what they think is one), companies too often look at their competitors or other similar players and try to reverse-engineer what they are doing. They do this because they want validation that the path they are on is worth pursuing.
Unfortunately, asking yourself “Where else is this working?” also leads you (or should lead you) to ask yourself whether the other party’s experience is relevant for you. And when you look really hard, you always find that it isn’t.
To the inexperienced strategist, this is very frustrating at first, because we’d all love to find a repeatable framework for success. In reality, this is the essence and strength of all good strategies: they are a unique byproduct of the context we inhabit and our strengths in that context—and, because of that, they are non-repeatable.
This doesn’t mean that we should completely ignore what other companies are doing. In fact, our understanding of the market should be thorough and constantly up-to-date, both because it helps us understand what the floor looks like and because it helps us chart our own path.