In all my years of business experience, I have been advised about the importance of having the First Mover Advantage. That being the first in a market allows you to be the trendsetter, the category initiator and a leader – by virtue of gaining market share until competition starts to grow. That definitely sounds enticing. Who doesn’t want to have the highest market share or the be the leader driving a category? However, this strategy has been debated over time and until recently changed my mind about it when I read about how in today’s world it’s about how the Last will be first.
A book I’ve been reading called Zero to One by Peter Thiel has been most illuminating. Besides being an author, Thiel also happens to be the co founder of PayPal and currently serves on the board of Facebook and some other companies. Known to be one of the most influential investor, he draws great perspective and ideas about how business in today’s world works.
One of the chapters in this book really caught my attention. It’s about the Last Mover Advantage. Heard of this before? It essentially highlights that – what really matters is, no matter if you’re the first or second in the market, one has to constantly innovate and create new ways to fulfill the consumer needs. Because the one who does will take over from the first mover. He highlights that it’s much better to be the last mover, who with its latest development unseats the first mover and enjoys years of serving customers and reaping fruits of success.
This is something that I have always said – Africa will leapfrog in terms of banking technology, and that is our last mover advantage. We at Diamond Bank are constantly innovating and creating ways to overcome challenges and serve our customers in the best possible manner. It is no surprise therefore, that Diamond Mobile App recently crossed 2 Million users milestone. The end goal is essentially to be a long lasting organization that stands for its principles and known for its outstanding banking service.
He sums it up real well at the end of the chapter – “you must study the endgame before everything else”
Great Job you’ve done with the Diamond mobile app, you really pushed for it’s adoption about a year ago, it’s actually impressive that several other banks are only beginning to push now, you get 5 stars for your foresight. I’m surprised by the level of adoption though, I consider it a very useful tool (95% of my bank transactions are executed on it) yet only 2 million of your customers share that view. I think CBN and the banks should have a second look at how these channels are positioned, In Kenya, every one…literately every one (old, young, rich, poor, learned & ignorant) uses mPesa, They process more mobile money transaction than we do yet we’re about 5 times their population. They’re not more tech savvy than we are, I think the difference is in the positioning, we can actually borrow a leaf from that in positioning mobile banking apps for Nigeria, i’m positive we’ll have a significantly higher adoption rate when we do.