How startups can create competitive advantage

Lincoln Njogu
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

A wave of digital and mobile revolution has swept over Kenya and it continues to do so at a high rate. Internet and mobile connectivity has evidently led to making the world a global village. A lot of tech-hubs have come up in Kenya which have acted as a catalyst to the growth of tech startups through incubation, accelerator programs, attracting the attention of the media as well as investors.

These tech hubs have led to the rise of many tech-startups which continue to created at a high rate. However, the reverse is true; many startups also cease to exist at a very high rate due to many other factors beyond the scope of this article. It is therefore of interest to tech start-up founders to gain insights through applying strategic thinking aspects into their overall strategies to boost their competitive advantage. Competitive advantage in this context includes having an awesome customer service, offering value for the consumer through the product being offered, having a good brand reputation and of course increasing the market share of the startup.

Numerous research have shown that small businesses (including tech startups) that apply strategic thinking in their practices end up performing better than their counter parts.

The results below are part of a just concluded research paper published internally at Kenyatta University

3 strategic thinking variables were studied and they established that a unit increase in systems thinking will lead to a 0.15 increase in competitive advantage, a unit increase in creative thinking will lead to a 0.28 increase in competitive advantage and a unit increase in analytic methods will lead to a 0.05 increase in the competitive advantage among tech startups in Nairobi.

Creative thinking has the highest significance in regards to competitive advantage of a tech startup. Below are the factors that lead to creativity within startups

  • Have team diversity, not only the internal team but also the board members
  • Different conceptualization techniques such as brain storming sessions, round tables, design sprints/ideation that help foster creativity.
  • Attending different competitions especially at initial stages of the startup, accelerator programs etc
  • Networking events and meet-ups
  • Great product designs, on front-end (UX and UI) and back-end code methodology

Systems thinking also positively influences competitive advantage among tech startups. Systems thinking is where you view the business as a whole, different parts working together to create an edge tech startup.

  • Collaboration among different experts in the system; the Business Development manager working together with the System Engineer, the Customer relationship working together with the designers etc No ‘part’ of the tech startup works independently.
  • User Centric designs; aspects of UX/ design thinking carefully followed in making of the product
  • Technology integration; the diverse world of API’s. This includes developer API’s and documentation/ samples, integration of software product to commonly used CMS, frameworks or as embeddable widgets within websites
  • Customer feedback on usage of their platforms
  • Knowledge sharing within the team

Analytic methods also positively influences competitive advantage among startups.

  • Data Driven analytics, startups use analytics to drive sales and measure marketing behaviors. The tech startup founders showed that they preferred social media statistics to gauge the uptake of their services as well as media mentions on major online news sites.
  • Being in touch with different Research & Development/ major research results/ trends in the tech industry
  • Consumer Insights on platform usage via google analytics, mixpanel etc

Lincoln Njogu

Written by

…has a passion for Business & I.T solutions, Startup Growth Trends and Small Businesses that look to leverage from technology.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade