Aesop’s fables have been used for roughly 2500 years to illustrate some basic behavioral lessons. Those same stories, specifically the hare and the tortoise, can be used to describe the manufacturing market and those who run the race. In this blog post, you will find the three majors manufacturing competitors that are in it for the win.
It seems that the market stratifies into suppliers that have become the visionaries in every manufacturing Operational Excellence pillar or segment, such as:
Those that take a tools based approach to the market and those that have become the technologists. I think of these as the peacock, the tortoise, and the hare. The peacocks are the visionaries, the tortoises as the tools focused companies, and the hares are the technologists or technology-centric companies. The visionaries are peacocks because they are always painting the picture of the could-be, they design new user experiences. They paint the pretty picture, and they live in the realm of fashion or appearance. The tools suppliers are the craftsmen; tortoises focus on engineering new solutions. They live in the world of the engineer, and focus on creating the here-and-now. The technology-centric suppliers are the hares, who live in a world where speed and constant motion define their existence. Technology is constantly evolving and advancing. You have to be highly reactive and speedy to live in this fast evolving world and be an innovator.
In the classic fable, the hare challenges the tortoise to a race based on the fact the tortoise moves very slowly to go anywhere. The hare is so confident in its speed, it stops to take a nap midway through the race. I liken technology companies to hares because speed is of the essence in the technology world. After a technology sprint, the technologists ultimately have to spend some time extracting the value from the technology investment. Technology, for technology's sake, is not a viable long-term business. Eventually the technology company must deliver solutions to customers’ problems. While this interlude is not exactly sleeping, it gives the tortoises some time to catch up.
So, why have I classed engineering centric companies as tortoises? Mainly because companies that focus on engineering tend to be methodical. Many of them have strong hardware elements at the core of their business, and manufacturers tend to be conservative. In Aesop’s tale the tortoise, with its steady and consistent rate, eventually passes the sleeping hare and wins the race. This also occurs in the industrial software space. Technology companies can rapidly run past the engineering centric companies when it comes to getting infrastructure in place in the customer market. However, the tools or engineering focused companies ultimately become the more strategic supplier since they frequently are solving hard business problems with specific functionality.
In my version of this tale a new player enters the race – the peacock. As I noted above, the peacocks are the pure software companies. They are focused on the look-and-feel of a particular market segment. Peacocks focus on the user experience, the look-and-feel or the usability as it relates to their category. These companies often are visionary in that they look beyond the immediate user to the larger marketplace. In the product lifecycle space they see the end user as the ultimate consumer, not just the product designer at the manufacturing company. In other segments they see mobility and user access as the driving function, not just functionality or technical excellence, ease of use is their paradigm. In the consumer sector companies, like Apple, have shown that this is a very valid path to follow. We are beginning to see this transition in the industrial space, as well.
So, the race in the technology sector is on. If Aesop had written the tale with three competitors would he have still had the tortoise the victor? I wonder as clearly the peacock would capture all the attention from the rest of the animals in the forest. With a peacock in the mix, would the hare have thought it was a done-deal and stopped for the nap? I think not. The outcome in the industrial software sector is just as unpredictable today. All of the competitors have their strengths and challenges, but the real threat may be the centaur or the griffin. This is the mythical creature that combines the features of multiple beasts. From the LNS Research perspective, the hybrid company that balances out the best aspects of experiences, technologies, and functionalities will gain the lead. This approach will be the front-runner to a market-leading way, and finally catch the user community’s attention and dollars.
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