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When competition can develop better products, better delivery, better marketing and stronger customer relations at lower cost you lose, they win.  Competitors like these are not competitors you already know they are those you don't know yet.  However they are coming and they will run you over and take your market share at the click of a mouse. Look at Apple, Groupon or Foursquare. All have launched game-changing products-not by being first to market, but by rethinking the market's needs. They didn't just ask, "How can we make a better product?" They asked, "How can we better serve a need?" Interestingly, the need they addressed was often not being explicitly requested by the consumer. In his book The Innovator's Solution, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen describes this as addressing "non-consumption." By offering a product to a specific part of the market that's not currently buying, you're not competing with an established incumbent but, rather, creating a new market. And, often, you're introducing economics that make it difficult for entrenched competitors in other parts of the market to compete.

Gamification isn't just about badges and trophies. Experts weigh in on what you need to make next-generation customer rewards really work for your business.

You know how our social graphs are creeping into every aspect of our web lives, from search results to coupons? Well, get ready for something a lot more personal, a lot more targeted and, perhaps, a lot more creepy. Much as social graphs are maps of our social media connections that follow us across the web, interest graphs are maps of our interests. Some companies want them to follow us across the web, too, meaning that wherever we go, there we are. There'll be no more need to search through news sites for the stories we want, or shopping sites for the products we want, because the site will know as soon as we hit its system who we are and what we like. Whether you're fascinated or appalled by the idea of interest graphs, here's a taste of how they might work.

Just because a product has the largest market share doesn't mean it is the best one for your organizational needs.

Gamification is the latest buzzword on the street. It ranked a keynote panel session at Enterprise 2.0 in November and it was one of two main topics discussed at the recent Institute for Social, Search and Mobile Marketing (ISSMM) K1 Executive Roundtable.