Analyze Competitors: Product Gaps and Strategic Risks

Overview

AI, Data Science & Cloud Certificates from Google, IBM & Meta — 50% Off

One plan covers every Professional Certificate on Coursera. 50% off Coursera Plus Annual for 10 days only — price increases June 17.

Unlock All Certificates

In today's competitive landscape, understanding your product's position and anticipating competitor moves is critical. This course, Analyze Competitors: Product Gaps and Strategic Risks, provides a practical, hands-on introduction to the core techniques that every product manager and strategist needs. You will learn to move from gut feelings to data-driven decisions by mastering a structured approach to analyzing product offerings and evaluating strategic threats. Through real-world case studies like the "Streaming Wars" and Blockbuster's historic failure, you will learn to visually map competitive advantages using gap analysis and systematically prepare for future challenges with risk assessment frameworks. This course is for anyone who needs to make compelling, evidence-based recommendations about where to invest, how to differentiate, and how to defend their market position. You will build a Product & Risk Analysis Report, proving you can provide the actionable intelligence that product and strategy teams depend on to win.

Syllabus

Gap Analysis: Finding Your Competitive Edge

In this module, learners will master gap analysis to uncover strategic advantages in product offerings. Using the competitive "Streaming Wars" as a real-world case study, learners will define key attributes, score competing products, and create a spider chart to visually pinpoint where their product leads, lags, or has an opportunity to differentiate itself, directly informing product strategy.

Risk Assessment: Preparing for Competitor Moves

This module focuses on proactively identifying and neutralizing business threats. Using the classic case of Blockbuster's failure to anticipate the rise of Netflix, learners will master a risk assessment framework to score and prioritize threats, enabling them to develop actionable mitigation strategies that build business resilience.