By Ted Jackson, Co-Founder, ClearPoint Strategy
In the fall of 2025, we created our first Strategic Planning Annual Report. As a strategic planning software company, we have years of great data about how organizations design and execute their strategies.
By the time we did the analysis, we discovered we had 20,582 strategic plans and 30 million rows of strategy data.
In our annual report, we covered the high-level takeaways—but there's so much more to dig into. In this post for LBL Strategies, we set out to answer a specific question:
"How often do organizations focus on gaining an advantage over their competition during strategic planning?"
What we found surprised us.
The Key Finding
Our analysis reveals that 2.51% of all strategic initiatives explicitly focus on competitive advantage (1,306 of 52,131), but this number tells only part of the story.
The way organizations conceptualize and articulate competitive advantage varies dramatically by industry, organizational type, and strategic maturity.
Here's the central insight: Organizations rarely use the word "competitor" when pursuing competitive advantage. Instead, they use industry-specific operational metrics and strategic frameworks that serve as proxies for competitive positioning.
When we looked at the data using two different analytical lenses, we found:
- 42% (219 initiatives) use traditional competitive language: "competitor," "market share," "competitive advantage," "benchmarking." These cluster in financial services, higher education, and business consulting—industries where competitive framing is culturally accepted.
- 51% (1,306 initiatives) pursue competitive outcomes through industry-specific metrics: ARR growth for tech, patient volume for healthcare, ADR for hospitality, economic development for government.
Different Industries, Different Languages
The data revealed distinct patterns by sector:
Technology companies (658 initiatives) don't say "market share"—they track ARR/MRR growth, platform development, and ecosystem building. Translation: "We're winning if we grow recurring revenue faster than peers."
Healthcare organizations focus on patient volume, service lines, and centers of excellence. These are competitive positioning tools, just not labeled as such.
Hospitality businesses (34 initiatives) measure ADR (average daily rate). Translation: "We can charge more than competitors while maintaining occupancy."
Government entities were the most striking finding. Of 233 competitive initiatives from government, only 1 used explicit competitive language. They pursue economic development, business attraction, and placemaking—clearly competing with other cities for businesses and residents—but cultural norms prohibit competitive framing.
Why This Variation Matters
This isn't just about word choice. Several factors drive these differences:
Cultural constraints. Government and nonprofits can't say "beat the neighboring county," but they absolutely compete for businesses, residents, and grants.
Industry evolution. Each sector has developed its own vocabulary. Tech says "ARR growth" instead of "market share." Hotels say "increase ADR" instead of "beat Marriott." These industry-specific metrics have become universally understood proxies for competitive position.
Modern competitive thinking. Platform strategy replaces "market dominance." Ecosystem building replaces "competitive barriers." Net Promoter Score replaces "customer loyalty vs. competitors."
Strategic maturity. Organizations using explicit competitive frameworks tend to have formal strategic planning processes and exposure to business strategy concepts—but that doesn't make them more competitive, just more explicit about it.
What This Means for Your Strategy
The central insight from our analysis:
Competition in strategic plans is like dark matter in the universe—we can't see most of it directly, but we can detect it through its effects on observable metrics.
Organizations pursue competitive advantage through financial performance, operational excellence, customer satisfaction, and market positioning. But only a small fraction explicitly labels these as "competitive."
Three practical takeaways:
- Use industry-appropriate metrics. Don't force generic competitive language if your sector uses different indicators. Track what actually signals competitive position in your context.
- Recognize competitive strategy in operational language. When teams set goals around industry-specific metrics, they're often making competitive positioning choices—make those connections explicit.
- Understand the full competitive landscape. Many organizations are more competitive than they realize. Frame operational metrics as competitive advantages to strengthen strategic discussions.
Understanding both the universal principles of competitive strategy and the specific vocabulary your industry uses—that's what makes strategic planning effective.
You can access more of the takeaways by downloading our first Strategic Planning Annual Report.
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About ClearPoint Strategy: ClearPoint Strategy is a strategic planning and performance management platform that helps organizations execute their strategies effectively. Through analysis of over 52,000 strategic initiatives, ClearPoint provides unique insights into strategic planning best practices.