Competing against long-standing, complacent incumbents oligopolistically dominating a market for a long time is a daunting task for an innovator, a startup, a serious contender. The core challenge of winning market share at their expense is to help customers escape from Plato’s allegorical Cave, deftly created by incumbents, and build your own.

About the book

This book is an exploration of lessons that Plato’s Allegory of the Cave delivers both for incumbents, and their serious contenders. As such, it doesn’t cater only to those competing against incumbents, but also to those incumbents who have long enjoyed a fortified position thanks to an enduring market share.

It has been written based on actual, real-life, hard-won experiences in successfully competing against long-standing, complacent incumbents, whose products had for decades been considered to be a safe bet, the obvious choice, unexciting but acceptable, despite an outdated and cumbersome UX/UI, a charging model curtailing affordability, tired brand-focused marketing targeting customers’ complacency, etc.

Yet, it has also been informed by my own working experience and observations of how premium incumbent brands (fail to) react and (rarely) respond to new contenders, even when those contenders pose significant threats to the incumbent’s market share.

The book contains a breakdown of the applicability of the allegory on such situations, exploring them from both sides. Because, ultimately, even a serious new contender would greatly like to dethrone the past incumbent, and build its own allegorical Cave.