Different internal functions define 'who we compete with' inconsistently, which undermines the 'competitive alternatives' step of Dunford's Five-Part Positioning Framework if left unreconciled:
Because no single function has the full picture, and internal arguments rarely settle the question (nobody wins an argument against the CEO or against sales), direct customer data — via Systematic Customer-Intelligence Practices for Positioning — becomes the practical tiebreaker rather than any one department's opinion.
Product, marketing, sales, and the CEO each carry a different, biased picture of "who we compete with." Product tracks horizon/roadmap competitors. Marketing tracks whoever spends big on marketing — the "scary competitor." Sales sees the real short-list but systematically undercounts status-quo/no-decision losses as competition, since reps reframe every stall as "not yet": "That's not a no. That's a not yet, buddy. I'm going to get you next year." The CEO's view is frozen at the point they last sold personally and further skewed by investor-facing futurism — "Dude, we haven't seen Oracle on our short list in like 5 years. What are you talking about?" No one internally can out-argue the CEO, yet the CEO's view is the least reliable of the four. This unreliability compounds a broader pattern: even well-resourced leaders demonstrably fail at predicting technology's near future within a few years ("We are lousy at predicting the future. Terrible at it. Terrible."), which is the underlying reason to reconcile these functional biases against direct, systematic customer data — see Systematic Customer-Intelligence Practices for Positioning — rather than deferring to any single function's opinion, including the CEO's or sales'.