A very first approach may cover the strategic initiative aiming to start a complete Competitive Strategy approach in order to set-up all the ingredients of a differentiating offering. World-wide standards (which are a key success factor for a global networking capability) may contribute to build, as a consequence, similar offerings from various actors.
As the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) trends are quite volatile (especially the telecommunication trends), an in depth and continuous survey of those markets is mandatory in order to better understand what is an instantaneous reactive move and what is a trend. The split in between short term and long term cycle is key, as well as the learning curves and the adoption or penetration rates. Coming from this in depth knowledge of the market segment, differentiating factors are to be investigated in order to bring competitive advantages.

In order to identify a competitive advantage, the second approach is to compare the various differentiation factors within the market segment, in between several companies, which seem to be quite similar and to find out what are the best practices for this market segment. Benchmarking is the name of the game, knowing that such an approach can generate “me too” attitudes. Getting and adapting the best practices to a company will make it quite similar to the others, even if it is an improvement as compared to those other companies.
A real competitive advantage may come from the fact that the company is the only one to have such a set of best practices, but some of the competitors have some of those best practices, so the competitive advantage may shrink very easily.
Instead of looking for what the competitors are doing well, the very first question is what they are not doing, even if the analysis for a competitive advantage is starting from a Benchmarking viewpoint.

The third approach aims to accelerate through partnerships. Extended sales channels, enhanced technology, shared investments (marketing or R&D), complementary offering (“horizontal integration”, ecosystems”, … ) may be covered through efficient partnerships quicker than through internal development (organic growth). Business Development is the name of this game. Defining a common set of business objectives (event if they are non binding), agreeing on committed measurable results for those objectives, accepting a reviewing and report process (regarding those objectives) and the relevant escalation process, will give a committed, but flexible and efficient framework.
The learning curve for those partnerships may start from lead generation (marketing agreement with a quite low level of investment) and may go up to joint development (with a quite high level of shared investment).

Each and every co-operation area (within the partnership) will be evaluated through a SWOT analysis framework, giving for each of the partners and for both (combined) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, with as an ultimate goal to Increase the strengths, to reduce the weaknesses, to improve the opportunities and to avoid the threats.

Business Catalyse (as it is sometimes called) is this overall approach aiming to trigger the business development process through external means, based on the fact that they will enrich the whole process by accelerating it, boosting it, bringing strategic impulse from the competition and from the market, challenging it, rather than exclusively counting on internal forces.