Why I don’t worry about competiton

"If you worry too much about competition, you are always playing the follower game, following in their footsteps. You stop seeing the lay of the land since you are so focused on what your competition. Instead of leading the company with your own strategy, you start driving based on someone else’s strategy which you might not understand, and which does not focus on your strengths."

Words to live by. I love this article. Stay connected to your innovative-self, and not reactive-imitative-self. There are countless similar stories and examples of techs that should not have thrived based on the fear factor of competition from big playas.

I'm sure this is a very nice piece for the members of the audience currently working in small firms; it's very reassuring. Apart from the feel-good "do your best and things will be okay," I'm wondering if the implicit advice to not worry about competition makes a lot of sense.

It seems that paying attention to the latest trends in your industry would fall under the category of "worrying about competition", as would trying to differentiate your product from similar offerings. The linked story mentions the strengths of the product of over Microsoft's future offerings, which makes me think that the author (or at least somebody at his firm) has been worrying about competition.

Without making the tautologically-false claim that focusing too much on other's work is a good idea, it seems safe to say that you should care about what your competitors are doing.