Quantcast's free audience reports couldn't be copied by the incumbents (Comscore and Nielsen), because selling similar reports was their core business. They hat

Quantcast's free audience reports couldn't be copied by the incumbents (Comscore and Nielsen), because selling similar reports was their core business. They hated us, but we never spent a moment worrying about them. In fact we were always open to working with them, but they were bound up in a knot over our model. Southwest undercut united and American by avoiding business and first class, flying only one model of plane (737), which lowered maintenance costs and allowed easier substitution of planes among flights. They skipped the hub and spoke model and flew out of peripheral airports that were cheaper, and boarded like buses with no reserved seats to shorten the idle time a the gate, etc. no long flights meant no meal service. There was no possible way for United and American to match them on price. They were afraid to adopt any of these changes because it might tarnish their brand. They were too focused on competing with each other. Dell offered lower costs than their competitors by charging up front for the computer before buying the parts (which were steadily falling in price). The competition were stuck with a channel model where they shipped finished computers to channel partners for stocking in inventory, so they not only had to buy parts far in advance but had to give a cut to channel partners and retailers, making their prices higher and profit lower. Netscape had a dozen competitors to their browser. Netscspe offered free downloads to anyone, and with a wink asked for a licensing fee. No individuals paid it, but corporations did because they wanted to be in legal compliance. Best of both worlds (free for individuals and paid by corporations, but only after achieving critical mass within the corporation). They crushed their competitors with this model, who were charging license fees to all customers from the beginning, as competitors didnt get the benefit of rogue employee groundswell to achieve critical mass in corporations. Hilariously, Microsoft in turn crushed Netscspe by goong a step further, making Internet Exploror completely free, no wink needed. Netscspe browser revenue dried up as corporations stopped paying for Netscape because they already had a free license to ie. This was funny to me, as it led to all sorts of crybaby behavior by Netscape screaming "antitrust!", when all Microsoft did was tweak the strategy used by Netscape themselves to crush the others. All of these cases are "strategy", which is defined by Michael Porter as the way that you are different from your competitors. Ideally, in a way they cannot copy. Notice how a strategy allows you to avoid competing, because you're playing a different game altogether.