Magnetic

7Better Beats Different

Don't Strive to Be Different. Be Better. (Now That's Different.)

“It's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.”

—Jony Ive, Chief Design Officer, Apple

Be the Best at What Matters Most—the Only Strategy You'll Ever Need. That's the name of my last book, and it's a bold statement. I wrote the book partly in response to the growing popularity of “wow” factors and “being different” as strategies for success in business. My work with hundreds of businesses tells me that pursuing a strategy of being different almost always turns out to be a wild goose chase that gets you nowhere. It also gets you beaten in the market by competitors who focus on being better.

Let me take the core idea from that book even further and make another bold statement: Better beats different. I would submit to you that this is not my opinion, but the reality of the marketplace.

I'm all for a good “wow” factor, and certainly all for being different, but not at all for the strategy of being different. If you want to be a kind of different that counts for something, be better. That's the greatest differentiator in business. The great recession that began in 2008 caused lots of business leaders to look for a way out of their business troubles. Rather than take the path of being better, many of them took the “wow” path, with the hopes that buzzers and bells would create customers and increase business.

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