Ohmae's 3C Model
Ohmae's 3C model checks a strategy against three players at once, your own Corporation, the Customer, and the Competitor, because a strategy that only makes sense from one of those three seats usually isn't a strategy yet.
Three circles overlap - customer, company and competitor - and a workable strategy has to sit where all three meet.
Reach for this when…
- You're confident in a strategy but haven't actually checked it against what customers want.
- You're losing ground to a rival and can't say exactly why.
- A plan reads well internally but ignores what's happening in the market.
How to run it
- Corporation: assess your real strengths, resources and cost position honestly.
- Customer: establish what they actually need and value, not what you assume.
- Competitor: map rivals' strategies, strengths and likely next moves.
- Find where the three overlap - that's where a defensible strategy sits.
- Build the strategy from the overlap, not from whichever 'C' is loudest internally.
A worked example
Situation. Emily MacDonald ran MacDonald Home, an eco-appliance brand in Halifax, Canada, and was losing share to a cheaper new entrant without understanding why, since her products were objectively better made.
Applied. Running the 3C check, she found Customers actually rated after-sales service above build quality, and the Competitor was winning not on price but on a repair turnaround she'd never benchmarked.
Result. She redirected investment from another quality upgrade into a same-week repair service. Renewal rate among lapsed customers improved within two quarters.
The catch
Three circles can flatten a genuinely complex market into a tidy triangle, and it says nothing about timing, capital, or execution risk. It's also a snapshot: competitors move, and a 3C done once goes stale fast in a fast-moving category.
If your 3C only confirms what you already believed about your own Corporation, you didn't do the Customer and Competitor legs properly.
Origin: Kenichi Ohmae