How to Predict a Non-Star Business

It's hard to predict which business will succeed. It's easier to predict which business will fail in it's current form. Following are the pointers that predict a Non-Star Business:

1. The business is a follower of an established player in a particular space while not being significantly different from the leader (with resources being almost equal) - Example - Google Checkout which is trying to follow PayPal.

2. The positioning statement for the business uses cliched phrases and words, is not clear and cannot be described to the target market in less than 5 seconds without distortion - Example - Google Wave.

3. The business is not radically different from the market leader, does not attack the business in a new way or offers only incremental improvement over existing offerings which are perceived as 'good enough' by target market - Example - Google Buzz which is trying to do what Twitter does but in a more annoying way. Even worse people are confused as to how Google Wave is different from Google Buzz :) You know you have a problem when the press needs to write an article titled: "Google Buzz Versus Google Wave"

I have nothing personal against Google. I love it's search engine and it's brilliant engineering talent. I just wish that they had the humility to hire somebody like Jack Trout & Al Ries to advise them in positioning, branding and naming their businesses.

Of course, the other way to look at Google is that they encourage tinkering with the knowledge that unpredictable positive black swans will emerge. While this is really important, the basics of marketing should not be disregarded.

Alternatively, it's possible that Google already knows that it's a follower and needs to make these moves and build these products in order to stave off future flanking attacks from competitors (an application of Game Theory.)

Or it's possible that their desire is not to be number 1 in a market space with the knowledge and understanding that the market is big enough to support two or three players (this is the "Law of the Ladder" as described by Ries / Trout in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing) But at any rate these are not Star Businesses.