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Break From the Pack:
How to Compete in a Copycat Economy
by Oren Harari

Book Overview: In today's Copycat Economy, products and being commoditized, services are being imitated, and traditional barriers to market entry are collapsing. Markets are becoming more crowded with "me-too" players and products. In this environment, it's harder to differentiate yourself from competitors, it's harder to keep profit margins and customer loyalty up, and it's harder to grow market share and stock value. To sustain healthy growth and competitive advantage in today's Copycat Economy, your organization must break from the pack. This book will show you and your colleagues how—in detail. Chapter Overviews: The excerpts available below are in PDF format. Chapter 1: Welcome to Commodity Hell: The Perils of the Copycat Economy The symptoms of the Copycat Economy and the causes of Commodity Hell. How the commoditization and imitation of everything defines the new Copycat Economy—and why it's all accelerating. The new challenges and opportunities of deregulation, globalization, and technological advances. The new opportunities to break from the pack while your competitors stay stuck in "hell". Read Excerpt - Chapter 1 Chapter 2: How to Lose: Ten Compulsions Guaranteed to Keep You Mired in the Pack Why so many orthodox and familiar management approaches are doomed to failure—Beware, your company is probably doing some of them! The limitations of conventional approaches to marketing, cost-reduction, pricing, quality, lobbying, and more. (And the double-edged challenges of programs that often become faddish, like Six Sigma, diversity, and more). Why if you do what everyone else does—no matter how good you do it--you'll inevitably be in a low-margin business. Read Excerpt - Chapter 2 Chapter 3: The Madonna Effect and the Willie Nelson Principle: The Power of Calculated Reinvention How to spot and capture fleeting trends and opportunities in the marketplace—and do so profitably. How to lead customers and markets (not just respond to them)—and do so profitably. How to reinvent your organization and your value proposition—regularly, and profitably. How Madonna, Willie, and a whole host of companies have done just that. Read Excerpt - Chapter 3 Chapter 4: Curious, Cool, and Crazy: Building a Culture of Disciplined Lunacy How to create a culture of curious (built around inquisitiveness and willingness to explore unchartered paths), cool (built around doing the edgy and unconventional), and crazy (built around a disciplined lunacy). How to combine passion and precision for both innovation and execution. How to take risk and succeed—and prove to others that not doing the unconventional is riskier. How to build design into everything you do. How to be perpetually extraordinary and unique in ways that matter to customers. How to do "strategy on the run." Read Excerpt - Chapter 4 Chapter 5: Dominate or Leave Why being the best is more important for corporate health than being the largest (and how being the best is the best predictor of sustained growth). How to select the best markets for your organization—and then dominate them. How to pick and choose which markets to enter and which to avoid, which customers to keep and which to fire, which assets to build and which to dump. How to distinguish between "good business" to embrace and "bad business" to avoid. How to choose financial and market metrics that dominate. How to build a dominating corporate culture. Read Excerpt - Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Put the Pieces Together For a Higher Cause How to create a higher cause that will help your organization make a big difference, brand a unique footprint, and leave a big legacy. How to create a higher cause that will focus your organization's efforts, inspire people, and challenge everyone to innovate on behalf of extraordinary goals. How to make your higher cause authentic, revolutionary and evolutionary. Read Excerpt - Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Build a Defiant Pipeline How to create a powerful pipeline of breakthrough products and services. How to insure that the pipeline will defy conventional wisdom, industry practices, and even your own organization's current menu. How to become a genuine partner with your customers. How to be a magnet for the most innovative employees and partners, who you'll need to create that pipeline. Read Excerpt - Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Take Your Customer to an Impossible Place Why "customer satisfaction" has become an insufficient commodity response; why "wow!" has become the growth imperative. How to take your customers to a place they thought was simply impossible—and thereby elicit the "wow!" and the passionate loyalty. How to institutionalize this process and make it part of the fabric of the organization. How to do it with authenticity, caring, turbo-speed, and total customization. How to brand it. Read Excerpt - Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Take Innovation Underground Why innovating in the underground (cost reduction, operational efficiency and supply-chain management) is as important as innovating in the above-ground (products, services, customer care). How to innovate in these supposedly "dull" areas like cost reduction, operational efficiency, and supply-chain management. How to do so not just to save lots of money and time, but to enjoy quantum leaps in foresight, customer care, and agility. Read Excerpt - Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Consolidate for Cool Why the track record of conventional "mergers and acquisitions" (M & A) is so awful; why more than half of them fail miserably and destroy shareholder value. Why "consolidating for cool" is much more likely to help you break from the pack than will "consolidating for size." The revolutionary new 6T Blueprint for M & A that will help you avoid the usual M & A pitfalls and instead, make acquisitions that will help your organization break from the pack. How strategic alliances can sometimes be superior to M & A in breaking from the pack. Read Excerpt - Chapter 10 Chapter 11 You, the Leader of the Pack: A 12-Step Recovery Program How to personally lead your organization to break from the pack—and what you can do even if you're not at the top of the hierarchy. How to do so in a way that will create fresh compelling value for the organization and your career. 12 specific leadership steps that will make you a hero in moving boldly, creating breakthrough, attracting talent, mobilizing people, inspiring change, and executing with brilliance, flair and discipline. How to know when to hold and when to fold when it comes to your career. Read Excerpt - Chapter 11