Use the Nightmare Competitor Approach management method to transform traditional business models into customer-centric concepts. The starting point is a potential or existing threat from the competition – unless your company is the aggressor. The focus is on the essential wishes of your customers. Using the Nightmare Competitor approach, you question whether your customers are really happy with your products and services – or whether a lot of things are not superfluous and, on the other hand, innovations for them are lacking. This is how you reshape your business model, and it will determine whether your nightmare comes true – or your company itself becomes your competition’s biggest nightmare.
Why does this management method bear the drastic name “Nightmare Competitor”? On the one hand, it appears to the attacked company that the attack occurs virtually “overnight.” This is often the case with investments by particularly agile start-ups, as they know how to streamline complex processes and products and concentrate on the essentials. Second, things seem more threatening to us at night than in daylight. A nightmare sends us into a panic and often offers no way out. Thus, in an ever faster changing world, attacking competitors are becoming a nightmare for many companies that yesterday thought they were in a comfortable comfort zone.
Ulrich Grothe’s Nightmare Competitor approach is thus a creative method that uses the figurative metaphor of the “nightmare competitor” to activate companies and managers to change. With an image that is as threatening as possible, even if it is overdrawn, a hopeless situation is created from which it is necessary to free oneself. Because while it’s still a dream, your company can still respond. Or vice versa: step by step, the method can be used to plan how to mutate yourself into a nightmare for your competition.
With the method, you systematically develop business models that could shape the future of an industry. Grothe uses the Business Model Radar for visualization and the associated better understanding of the Nightmare Competitor Approach. The management tool is used to develop business models and presents services, products, value propositions, costs and benefits graphically. It differs from the Business Model Canvas in that it takes a network perspective instead of the traditional value creation perspective.
