Deconflate Competing Vendors and Competing Products or Services

The current Aha metamodel (view of the world) characterizes "Competitors" as One Trick Pony vendors that sell one Product or Service that is competitive to the Aha Product Owner's organization. This is a conflation of the concept of an external actor that also sells products and services (i.e. a Vendor) and of the concept of a particular product or service or set of products and services that, when combined, distract prospects from the Product Owner's one or more products to those of the competitive Vendor.

We need to track Vendors (or just Ventures) separately from the Products, Services, and/or Products and Services of one or more of those Ventures.

Often, a particular Venture can play multiple roles with one's particular Venture. That external Venture might be a Buyer of one or more of our Products and Services; a Supplier of one or more of the key components of our Products and Services; a Partner in the production of our Products and Services; or one of the Vendors in a partnership whose particular Product, Service, or Products and Services competes with a particular set of our Products and Services (i.e. this last role is the one conversationally called "a competitor").

The ability to track information on Competitors is vital and the current Aha! capabilities are enabling but, today, the conflation of Ventures and their Products and Services into a single Company concept that exists solely to produce one Product is too limiting.