• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

How to See Opportunities Your Competition Doesn’t

November 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Different' by Youngme Moon (ISBN 0307460851) Harvard strategy professor Youngme Moon’s Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd (2010) describes how many companies pursue the same opportunities that every other company is chasing and thus miss the same opportunities that everyone else is missing.

In category after category, companies have gotten so locked into a particular cadence of competition that they appear to have lost sight of their mandate—which is to create meaningful grooves of separation from one another. Consequently, the harder they compete, the less differentiated they become … Products are no longer competing against each other; they are collapsing into each other in the minds of anyone who consumes them.

Moon argues that the companies and brands that see a different game win big. Such innovators don’t just try to outcompete their rivals at the margin. Instead, they redefine the competitive landscape by embracing unique ideas in a world crammed with me-too thinking.

European airline Ryanair unleashed a new wave of relentless cost- and price-leadership by charging customers extra for everything beyond a seat itself. If you want to check a bag, you pay extra. If you want an airport agent to check you in and print your boarding pass, you pay extra. If you want food and drink, you pay extra. Later on, Spirit Airlines took the price-obsession further by charging for carry-on bags too. After a rough rollout and customer defiance, paying for carry-on bags has become the new normal.

Idea for Impact: Being different is what makes all the difference. If you do things the same way everyone else in your field does things, why would you expect to do any better? What are you doing to raise your game—not just to stay in place, but to get ahead?

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Lessons from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works: Autonomy Can Create Innovative Workplaces
  2. Five Where Only One is Needed: How Airbus Avoids Single Points of Failure
  3. Fail Cheaply
  4. Find out What Your Customers Want and Give it to Them
  5. Your Product May Be Excellent, But Is There A Market For It?

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leadership, The Great Innovators Tagged With: Aviation, Competition, Customer Service, Getting Ahead, Innovation, Leadership, Risk, Strategy

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

Get Updates

Signup for emails

Subscribe via RSS

Contact Nagesh Belludi

Explore

Anxiety Attitudes Balance Biases Books Coaching Conflict Conversations Creativity Critical Thinking Decision-Making Discipline Emotions Entrepreneurs Etiquette Feedback Getting Along Getting Things Done Goals Great Manager Leadership Leadership Lessons Likeability Mental Models Mentoring Mindfulness Motivation Networking Parables Performance Management Persuasion Philosophy Problem Solving Procrastination Relationships Simple Living Skills for Success Social Skills Stress Thinking Tools Thought Process Time Management Winning on the Job Wisdom Worry

RECOMMENDED BOOK:
Ego is the Enemy

Ego is the Enemy: Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday describes how a lack of humility can impede a full, successful life. Lessons: be humble and persistent; value discipline and results, not passion and confidence. Be less, do more.

Categories

  • Announcements
  • Belief and Spirituality
  • Business Stories
  • Career Development
  • Effective Communication
  • Great Personalities
  • Health and Well-being
  • Ideas and Insights
  • Inspirational Quotations
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Reading
  • Leading Teams
  • Living the Good Life
  • Managing Business Functions
  • Managing People
  • MBA in a Nutshell
  • Mental Models
  • News Analysis
  • Personal Finance
  • Podcasts
  • Project Management
  • Proverbs & Maxims
  • Sharpening Your Skills
  • The Great Innovators

Recently,

  • Deliver The Punchline First
  • The Tyranny of Best Practices
  • Inspirational Quotations #944
  • What Most People Get Wrong About Focus
  • Get Good At Things By Being Bad First
  • Inspirational Quotations #943
  • Learning from Bad Managers

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!