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

2. How to Lose: Ten Compulsions Guaranteed to Keep You Mired in the Pack

Before we get to what we can do to break from the pack, we need to confront the things that keep us stuck in it. Faced with the twin plagues of commoditization and imitation, business leaders reflexively resort to ten courses of action that create a false, seductive, and temporary illusion of security—and plunge their companies further into the spiral of Commodity Hell. In this chapter, we explore ten compulsions that keep businesses trapped in the pack. I call these courses of action compulsions because even though they are counterproductive and dysfunctional, we persist in clinging to them anyway, perhaps because they worked in the past or perhaps because they reflect ...