Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd
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."..to give a bullet-point summation of takeaways is to deny the real value of this lovely book."--Harvard Business Review
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Why trying to be the best ... competing like crazy ... makes you mediocre
Every few years a book--through a combination of the author's unique voice, storytelling ability, wit, and insight--simply breaks the mold. Bill Bryson's "A Walk in""the Woods" is one example. Richard Feynman's ""Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"" is another.
Now comes Youngme Moon's "Different, "a book""for "people who don't read business books." Actually, it's more like a personal conversation with a friend who has thought deeply about how the world works ... and who gets you to see that world in a completely new light.
If there is one strain of conventional wisdom pervading every company in every industry, it's the absolute importance of "competing like crazy." Youngme Moon's message is simply "Get off this treadmill that's taking you nowhere. Going tit for tat and adding features, augmentations, and gimmicks to beat the competition has the perverse result of making you like everyone else." "Different" provides a highly original perspective on what it means to offer something that is "meaningfully" different--different in a manner that is both fundamental and comprehensive.
Youngme Moon identifies the outliers, the mavericks, the iconoclasts--the players who have thoughtfully rejected orthodoxy in favor of an approach that is more adventurous. Some are even "hostile," almost daring you to buy what they are selling. The MINI Cooper was launched with fearless abandon: "Worried that this car is too small? Look here. It's even smaller than you think."
These are players that strike a genuine chord with even the most jaded consumers. In fact, almost every success story of the past two decades has been an exception to the rule. Simply go to your computer and compare AOL and Yahoo! with Google. The former pile on feature upon feature to their home pages, while Google is like an austere boutique, dominating a category filled with "extras."
"Different" shows how to succeed in a world where conformity reigns...but exceptions rule.
Every few years a book--through a combination of the author's unique voice, storytelling ability, wit, and insight--simply breaks the mold. Bill Bryson's "A Walk in""the Woods" is one example. Richard Feynman's ""Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"" is another.
Now comes Youngme Moon's "Different, "a book""for "people who don't read business books." Actually, it's more like a personal conversation with a friend who has thought deeply about how the world works ... and who gets you to see that world in a completely new light.
If there is one strain of conventional wisdom pervading every company in every industry, it's the absolute importance of "competing like crazy." Youngme Moon's message is simply "Get off this treadmill that's taking you nowhere. Going tit for tat and adding features, augmentations, and gimmicks to beat the competition has the perverse result of making you like everyone else." "Different" provides a highly original perspective on what it means to offer something that is "meaningfully" different--different in a manner that is both fundamental and comprehensive.
Youngme Moon identifies the outliers, the mavericks, the iconoclasts--the players who have thoughtfully rejected orthodoxy in favor of an approach that is more adventurous. Some are even "hostile," almost daring you to buy what they are selling. The MINI Cooper was launched with fearless abandon: "Worried that this car is too small? Look here. It's even smaller than you think."
These are players that strike a genuine chord with even the most jaded consumers. In fact, almost every success story of the past two decades has been an exception to the rule. Simply go to your computer and compare AOL and Yahoo! with Google. The former pile on feature upon feature to their home pages, while Google is like an austere boutique, dominating a category filled with "extras."
"Different" shows how to succeed in a world where conformity reigns...but exceptions rule.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked 'Different' up expecting a book like all other business books. It would have, I thought, a single idea that would have made a good essay. That idea would be padded out to 200 pages, because that's the length business books have to be. It would include examples from WL Gore, Whole Foods, Best Buy and South West airlines. It would have a coherent set of principles and a checklist I could follow to help improve my business. It would probably do those things exceptionally well.
It didn't.
It totally under-delivered.
But it doesn't matter.
Why doesn't that matter? Because it surprised me in so many other ways. It's not a traditional business book - it's a mashup between a business book and a reflective essay. It meanders between marketing and philosophy, spending as much time discussing what it means to live in the modern world as how to build brands. As you'd expect, Youngme talks about Google and Apple (how could a book that talks about brands that insult their customers, polarise consumers and revolutionise product categories fail to mention Apple?). Less expectedly - but still within the category of 'business book' she's careful to keep one foot in - she writes beautifully and conversationally about Mini, Marmite, Red Bull and BAPE. But she also talks about Richard Feynman, the Onion and the Fonz. She even uses the word 'motherf*cker' once. How many business books do that?
Youngme's thesis is that the way businesses are taught to compete is flawed. We're encouraged to talk to our customers and add the new features they demand. We examine our competitors, figure out where they're better than us and then we copy them. We find out what our weaknesses are, and fix them. We repeat, repeat, repeat, stuck on a treadmill of incremental innovation as we try to become better, faster, cleaner, cheaper, tastier - whatever it is that our customers tell us they want. The end result is entire product categories (bottled water, shampoo, detergent, cars, beer, operating systems, accounting software) stuffed with thousands of near-identical, micro-differentiated products that nobody can tell apart.
Youngme thinks there's a better way. She believes that the way to compete isn't by being better. It's by being different. The products and brands that people love are those that fail to give us what we expect, but which then surprise us in some other way. They refuse to be judged on the same axes as their competitors. They change our perception of what a product ought to do. Sometimes, they insult us. They cultivate their enemies as much as they nurture their friends. They're flawed, and they shout about their flaws to whoever will listen. They polarise. They refuse to be bland.
Youngme doesn't pretend this book is complete. Some of its ideas are tentative, and it has flaws. But rather than pretend those imperfections don't exist, she embraces them. Youngme describes Different as a 'leaky, leaky boat'. It takes what could be a weakness - its lack of absoluteness - and turns it into a tremendous strength. Sure, the book is ambiguous, its arguments aren't perfect and it offers few conclusions. But that's what the real world is like.
Buy this book, and be surprised.
It didn't.
It totally under-delivered.
But it doesn't matter.
Why doesn't that matter? Because it surprised me in so many other ways. It's not a traditional business book - it's a mashup between a business book and a reflective essay. It meanders between marketing and philosophy, spending as much time discussing what it means to live in the modern world as how to build brands. As you'd expect, Youngme talks about Google and Apple (how could a book that talks about brands that insult their customers, polarise consumers and revolutionise product categories fail to mention Apple?). Less expectedly - but still within the category of 'business book' she's careful to keep one foot in - she writes beautifully and conversationally about Mini, Marmite, Red Bull and BAPE. But she also talks about Richard Feynman, the Onion and the Fonz. She even uses the word 'motherf*cker' once. How many business books do that?
Youngme's thesis is that the way businesses are taught to compete is flawed. We're encouraged to talk to our customers and add the new features they demand. We examine our competitors, figure out where they're better than us and then we copy them. We find out what our weaknesses are, and fix them. We repeat, repeat, repeat, stuck on a treadmill of incremental innovation as we try to become better, faster, cleaner, cheaper, tastier - whatever it is that our customers tell us they want. The end result is entire product categories (bottled water, shampoo, detergent, cars, beer, operating systems, accounting software) stuffed with thousands of near-identical, micro-differentiated products that nobody can tell apart.
Youngme thinks there's a better way. She believes that the way to compete isn't by being better. It's by being different. The products and brands that people love are those that fail to give us what we expect, but which then surprise us in some other way. They refuse to be judged on the same axes as their competitors. They change our perception of what a product ought to do. Sometimes, they insult us. They cultivate their enemies as much as they nurture their friends. They're flawed, and they shout about their flaws to whoever will listen. They polarise. They refuse to be bland.
Youngme doesn't pretend this book is complete. Some of its ideas are tentative, and it has flaws. But rather than pretend those imperfections don't exist, she embraces them. Youngme describes Different as a 'leaky, leaky boat'. It takes what could be a weakness - its lack of absoluteness - and turns it into a tremendous strength. Sure, the book is ambiguous, its arguments aren't perfect and it offers few conclusions. But that's what the real world is like.
Buy this book, and be surprised.
Format:Hardcover
The "Be different" to compete thesis has been covered before, most notably in the earlier "Blue Ocean Strategy" by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne but here it is 10x more readable. Moon's examples are explained more concisely in a narrative style that makes them more memorable and therefore useful.
Format:Hardcover
It's an intriguing question, you have to admit. In a time where -so it seems- every brand digs itself into an ever increasing amount of `hyper segments' (aren't we all waiting for a toothpaste that whiten our teeth while tasting like chocolate?), how does one differentiates itself?
The classical tools for brand augmentation -by addition and by multiplication- are not effective if every competitor follows the same strategy. Furthermore, competitive strategies tend to level out the players in it. If every brand is focusing on improving the metrics where it scores badly compared to competitors, what really happens is that every brand will start to look the same -like `average'.
So how can one differentiate itself from the competitive herd?
Youngme Moon provides some examples of companies who do, and even provides a classification for them -although she goes in great length in explaining that this classification is neither waterproof nor complete.
But even if it is not, it provides plenty of food for thought and a common vocabulary to understand how some brands succeed in escaping the competitive herd.
Both for its intimate style and witty insights, it's the best business book I've read so far this year.
The classical tools for brand augmentation -by addition and by multiplication- are not effective if every competitor follows the same strategy. Furthermore, competitive strategies tend to level out the players in it. If every brand is focusing on improving the metrics where it scores badly compared to competitors, what really happens is that every brand will start to look the same -like `average'.
So how can one differentiate itself from the competitive herd?
Youngme Moon provides some examples of companies who do, and even provides a classification for them -although she goes in great length in explaining that this classification is neither waterproof nor complete.
But even if it is not, it provides plenty of food for thought and a common vocabulary to understand how some brands succeed in escaping the competitive herd.
Both for its intimate style and witty insights, it's the best business book I've read so far this year.
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