Plenty of developers want to be the first to be second. In other words they want somebody else to blaze the trail, and pay for all the research and development that that entails, so they can ride their coattails safe in the knowledge that the market has been validated. This method is also widely used in other industries which is why debates surrounding intellectual property have come to the fore. Why do all the heavy lifting when you can simply follow the leader?
There are major differences, however, between merely copying what the other team is doing versus conducting a competitive analysis. Either through ignorance, arrogance, or just plain old fashioned disrespect many of my colleagues have not seen the data for the buildings. Those that advocate and develop sprawl have paid millions on focus groups, market studies, demographic studies, psychological studies, and every other type of study imaginable to divine the desires of their target market. That's very valuable information. Any competitive analysis should start by deconstructing that developer's offerings to see what lessons they've learned and what trends they've identified. There is a wealth of knowledge there just waiting to be tapped.
I tried to get that point across to a colleague who is also a New Urbanist and Classicist. They couldn't see past the ugly buildings and bad urban form of the sprawl projects. Yet their project failed even though they had a better town plan and attractive home elevations. They blamed their failure on the lack of taste in the marketplace but the real issue was their home plans didn't resonate with the market. This is a shame since what the market was looking for in a home was already figured out by the builder of the ugliness they despised. They lost the kingdom for want of a closet.
It's time to stop being snobs. This doesn't mean you have to build ugly homes. It simply means respecting your potential competition enough to analyze their offerings. You can use that data to build something wonderful. As a matter of fact, if you provide the same amenities in a more attractive package via better design you will crush the competition.
One caveat, though, based on another mistake that led to a failed project: you will win if you can provide the same features at the same price, or slightly more. You achieve this by not playing the square footage game. Better designs naturally are able to fit more living space into less square footage. Better designs typically cost more to build so this is a wash as far as the bottom line is concerned. So if you want to build better then you need to provide the same amenities (or find another way to address the desire and meet the need without providing the exact same thing) at the same price point as your competition in a smaller footprint.
So when the client offers to show you some plans that they like or that they have had success with you take them. You study them. You find out what the wish list items are in those plans, and you find a way to address those needs in the plans you provide. For instance, if all the developers are building 3/2s, but the third bedroom is being used primarily as a home office then you have some valuable data that you can use to better serve the needs of the market without building a 3/2. You can address that need without necessarily tacking on an extra bedroom. When the velocity of sales in your market favors homes within a certain price range then you can study those homes, provide a better design with less square footage that addresses the needs and desires identified in your competitive analysis and then target that price point.
Doing this requires the ability to think abstractly, to pull more from the data than "like" or "don't like", but it's not rocket science*. It simply requires of someone the ability to set aside their bias long enough to see and appreciate the tremendous amount of care and thought that goes into designing and building homes for the masses.
*While not rocket science this could, should, and probably will be an excellent exercise in data science. The best way to break free of the rearview mirror method of design is to apply a rigorous algorithm to a large sample set of home buying data. If you're in the home building business, know what Hadoop is, aren't afraid of matrix calculus and machine learning then we should talk. Soon.
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