Business wargaming to unlock market share & competitive advantage

The Challenge

In 2024, our client wanted to reposition one of their products to a lower price point, this was particularly risky as the German market is highly price sensitive and very competitive. There was a risk that all competitors could follow suite, resulting in a status quo albeit at a lower price point, devaluing the category as a whole.

Their fundamental challenge: 

How do we gain a deeper understanding of how competitors are likely to react to pricing moves and develop tangible scenarios and action plans?

The client needed to understand not just what their competitors were doing, but how they were thinking and what they were likely to do in the face of the price reposition. Traditional market research and competitive analysis had provided surface-level insights but failed to reveal the deeper strategic logic that would drive competitor behaviour. The company was caught in a cycle of reactive strategic planning - responding to competitor moves rather than anticipating them.

Cognosis was chosen specifically for our proven ability to help clients think like their competitors and uncover hidden strategic opportunities with business wargaming. The client recognised that they needed an outside perspective that could challenge their assumptions and provide fresh insights into the competitive dynamics shaping their market.

The stakes were high. The German market represented significant growth potential, but the window of opportunity was narrowing as competitors strengthened their positions. The client needed a credible, actionable strategy that could be implemented effectively to capture market share.

Our Approach

Over three months, we designed and delivered a comprehensive wargaming programme that would fundamentally shift how the client understood their competitive environment. 

The wargaming process was structured around deep competitive intelligence gathering and immersive role-playing exercises that would reveal the hidden dynamics of the German market.

The Wargaming Framework

Our methodology compelled the client team to step outside their own perspective and genuinely think like their key competitors. The framework addressed several critical questions:

How do our competitors think and make decisions?  Understanding and analysing their strategic logic and decision-making processes

What are their likely next moves?  Anticipate competitor strategies before they're implemented 

Where are the key battlegrounds?  Identify competitive spaces that are of critical importance 

How can we gain sustainable competitive advantage?  Develop strategies that are difficult for competitors to counter

Deep Market Intelligence 

Throughout the three-month engagement, our team leveraged existing intelligence and added new insights through extensive research into the German market dynamics, competitor financial performance, strategic partnerships, and organisational capabilities. This intelligence provided the foundation for realistic and informed role-playing exercises and was condensed into a detailed competitor analysis which formed the pre-read to the workshop.

Intensive Two-Day Workshop Design

The project culminated in an intensive two-day workshop involving a cross-functional team from the client, representing all key business functions and senior leadership.

Day One: "Thinking like the competition"

We transformed the client team into their key competitors through immersive role-playing exercises. We split the delegates into different teams which each represented a competitor. Each team was tasked with developing that competitor's most likely strategic response to various market scenarios. This exercise revealed crucial insights about competitor capabilities, constraints, and strategic priorities that had been invisible from the outside.

The role-playing sessions uncovered the key battlegrounds where competitive advantage would be won or lost. By forcing the client team to argue from their competitors' perspectives, we identified strategic blind spots and revealed opportunities that had been overlooked in traditional analysis.

Day Two: "Strategic response development"

Armed with deep insights into competitor thinking and behaviour, we worked with the client team to develop innovative strategic responses. Rather than simply reacting to competitor moves, the client could now anticipate them and develop proactive strategies that would be difficult to counter. 

The Impact

By experiencing the market through their competitors' eyes; it fundamentally changed how the client approached competitive strategy in the German market.  This delivered the following results and outcomes:

#1  Strategic clarity and direction:  For the first time, the client had a clear understanding of the true competitive dynamics in their market. The business wargame revealed hidden battlegrounds and strategic opportunities that traditional analysis had missed. The leadership team emerged with confidence in their strategic direction and a roadmap for implementation.

#2  Proactive strategic positioning:  The insights gained from role-playing competitor decision-making processes enabled the client to shift from reactive to proactive strategic planning. Instead of responding to competitor moves, they could now anticipate them and position themselves advantageously in advance.

#3  Cross-functional alignment: By working together to understand competitor behaviour and develop strategic responses, the cross-functional team developed shared insights and commitment to the chosen strategic direction.

#4  Implementation-ready strategy:  Unlike traditional strategic planning exercises that often produce theoretical insights, the client team emerged with implementable strategies and specific tactical initiatives that could be deployed immediately to capture market share.

#5  Enhanced competitive intelligence capability:  Beyond the immediate strategic insights, the wargaming process equipped the client team with enhanced capabilities for ongoing competitive analysis. They now had frameworks and approaches for continuously monitoring and anticipating competitor behaviour.

The success of the project has established a foundation for sustained competitive advantage in the German market, with the client now better positioned to anticipate and respond to competitive threats while identifying new opportunities for growth.

This wargaming project was part of a global rollout programme. Cognosis has facilitated and run over 20 similar business wargames with this specific client, in various markets across the globe, helping each market answer strategic questions and build out tangible action plans to address competitor challenges.  

* This case study has been anonymised given client confidentiality and the sensitive nature of the sector's competitive landscape.