This is how competition is supposed to be …
HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank
When ICICI faced a run on its deposits, Aditya Puri, the MD at HDFC Bank, sent out an email to his people asking them not to poach or accept deposits from ICICI’s clients until the [current financial] crisis was over.
The idea is not to take unfair advantage over other. Although there could be other reasons also, but emphasis on ‘until the crisis was over’ is a clear indication. Win by strategy and methodology, on the principles you set and believe instead by a simple run of back luck on your competition. It is alright, capitalizing on one’s good fortune, but not if you try to capitalize on others’ bad luck.
This goes quite well with my belief, that to rise higher you need to pull yourself up, instead of stepping on the other and pushing it down.
To pull oneself up, you need to have a clear vision where you want to see yourself at a later point of time. And that cannot be dependent on your competitions outlook. For this implies that your goals are relative and fluctuate with the goals of your opponent. And in turn it implies that yourself does not have clear understanding of your goals and only a relative understanding.
One must have its own benchmarks to succeed instead of having a relative. The idea should be to perform better from oneself and achieve a certain level of performance, instead of performing better than competition only.
The problem of setting the right benchmark for oneself, not being to harsh and not being too easy is equivalent to find a worthy adversary.
And besides, it save the trouble of gauging your performance as one external variable is removed, that being the performance of your competition.
A great competitor is not the one who wins, but the one who opens all his cards and still wins. For simply, he is a better executor of his plans, and has enough belief in himself and his plans (being foolproof and thoroughly thought out).
(This is contrary to what Apple does, and hence again, why Apple is overrated)
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