A friend in need is a friend indeed, and for me this friend has been very special. He keeps me awake at nights so as I do not take things lightly. He gives me jolts when I tend to relax and he keeps me reminding of innovations that I missed. He is my competitor who has been with me ever since I graduated out of university into professional role.

For me, my competitors is not my rival  but he is:

• someone with same thought process as mine, that’s why are in the same business.
• someone who has validated my concepts, we do same thing
• someone who reminds the customer about me, in whatever way
• someone who thinks about me, they plan strategy keeping me in mind

In my early days as product manager, I spent significant time (at times 40% of my bandwidth in a month) studying competition and in figuring out their strengths and weakness. 10 years gone and I still perform this task as sincerely as I used to do. I learned a lot in my exercise of studying competition, it is like learning from others experience, from my competitors failures and success, and today I do not hesitate in saying that my competitor played a significant role in my professional success as a product manager and I am sure in some or other way you too will appreciate this fact that learning from your competitors has taken you strength to strength.