Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd

By Youngme Moon

Categories: Business & Money

Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon argues that competition often makes products more alike, not more distinct. As companies copy each other's features, categories become crowded with near-identical offerings and customers stop seeing differences. Moon describes companies such as IKEA, Google and Harley-Davidson that broke away from the herd with reverse, breakaway or hostile positioning, and shows how true differentiation comes from bold choices.

Recommended by 1 person

• Shane Parrish: “I loved her analysis on how when the number of products in a category expands, the differences – or competition – between them become increasingly trivial. In business school we talked about differentiation a lot and this book reminds us that we sometimes forget what it means to be different.”