Market Analysis

A friend of mine recently wrote a blog post about performing a market analysis for the business she is starting up. It got me thinking about a struggle I've had for a long time. This is one of the barriers that prevents the same type of lean efficiency that the commercial sector can drive. What would a market analysis for a government agency really look like?

Mind you, government agencies are very good at putting together mission and vision statements as well as strategic plans. But we lack competition that is the engine of efficiency. Think about it like this. Any company, like Google or Apple has their unique competencies and resources. The profitability they earn is from how they take some of those unique competencies and turn them into core competencies and leverage them differently than other businesses. Google does this different from Apple, who also does it different from Microsoft who also does it different from Sony and so on.

Each of these companies must be disciplined in that they focus on building up competencies that are core to the organization and don't waste energy on building up competencies that are outside of the core. To bring this discussion around, the Market Analysis is about winning in a zero sum contest (for someone to win, someone else must lose). The market analysis should tell you how many organizations are delivering that product or service, how they compete with each other (value vs. price).

But here is the problem with a government agency, we're not competing with anyone. Don't misunderstand, I'm not promoting A-76, but I think that some areas of specialization would help us to identify those aspects that should represent our core competencies and we should focus on building up those competencies while off-loading things that aren't core. Those trade-offs will differ from one agency to another.