The Privilege of a Privileged insight

This nice-sounding word that started doing the rounds a few years back, called Privileged Insight. Everyone from McKinsey to McDonalds was losing sleep over it and all the hot thought leaders were pounding their desks demanding it. This is a cool strategy, but what's our differentiator? What's the one competitive advantage that will remain our advantage? What's our privileged insight about the consumer? What do we know that they don't know?

Now we know that a lot of tough questions don't have answers.

We know what a Privileged Insight means (let's call it Pi for shortness's sake, I'm getting carpel-tunnel-syndrome from typing it each time). And we also know the magic of Pi, how we'll use Pi and how

it'll transform the world. The only thing most of us were unsure of is its existence, more than momentary-fleeting that is.

Now that I've had the fortune to work on emerging industries (like eCommerce, and yes, I know it's emerged to various extent in various countries, but in India it's called emerging or yet to emerge), I've

often hunted for Pi myself. I've sometimes imagined I have it figured, only to lose it again. It troubles me. What can give me the privilege to know any Pi to the last decimal? How do I keep it privileged evenif I do pin it down? I'll not be the only person in the company who knows, and people leave companies and join others. Plus the same customer talks to other companies too. The same research company /researcher talks to others in the game.

Bigger problem, if Pi isn't known, then we market-players have the same insights. Then we should have the same imperatives, the same strategy, right? Not really. Possible, but not necessary.

Sometimes I feel there's something like Pi, even if there's nothing that's 'exactly' Pi. Maybe the difference in my company and the next is not different insights, but the way we use them. Specifically, even if given same / similar insights, we take different punts. That's the difference between 'us' and 'them'. We go and invest in Rural while they invest in the Youth. We build out the smartphone experience while someone else grabs the SMS / feature phone platform. One, or both of us will win, but we'll be different.

Under the same sky, some plant more potatoes and some plant more onions. One of these farmers will make more money and people (including the farmer himself) may think he had this Pi thing figured out. A consultant will convince him, and a management guru will spell it out, it's 3.1415926....