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

Prologue: The Never-Ending Race to Succeed

On an early Sunday morning stroll through a city I was visiting, I saw three individuals in jogging shorts running toward me in the middle of the street. They were fleet, lithe, vigorous, and impressive. I was intrigued. There were no cars on that street, which meant that traffic had been diverted. After the group passed me, I saw another small cluster of runners—six or seven people—exerting strong effort to catch up with the first group. I turned around as they huffed past me, to see that the back of their T-shirts advertised a corporate charity run.

A few minutes after the second group passed, I saw a huge pack of runners slowly approaching. It was a massive group whose members, jammed together, were ...