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

Everywhere, products and services are being imitated. Whatever an organization is doing and providing today is right now becoming imitated and commoditized, and, therefore, will inevitably require significant change. To sustain a competitive advantage in this "Copycat Economy," companies must break from the pack by differentiating themselves from their competitors. They must build cool, compelling products and attempt to always stay way ahead of their competitors. The book, `Break from the Pack', by Oren Harari (The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell), is about how to be the leader of a company that breaks from the pack. In every industry, says Harari, a very small number of organizations are fast, fit, healthy and clearly at the forefront. These groups are clearly ahead of "the pack". The bad news is that in a global free market, the pack is bigger than ever before! The pack grows, more players join in, constantly checking each other out and mimicking each other's movements. The result is the Copycat Economy, where everyone has access to the same resources and talent, and where imitation is rampant. According to the author, faced with this plague of imitation, business leaders reflexively resort to actions that plunge their companies further into the Copycat Economy. Some of those actions leaders should avoid are: 1. The Compulsion to Cut Prices: Lowering prices to keep customers from migrating to your competitors decimates a company's margins and trains customers to wait for another round of price cuts before buying. When one competitor copies the other's price-cutting sales promotion, both fall prey to the Copycat Economy. 2. The Compulsion to Get Bigger: The key predictors of corporate success is not the size of a company's tangible assets (its balance sheet), but the size of its intangible assets like its speed in execution and customer care, its culture of constant innovation, and its agility in capitalizing on opportunities. The companies that dominate don't dominate because they got big. They got big because they dominated! 3. The Compulsion to Ask Customers What They Want: Breaking from the pack requires you to lead customers to a place they didn't ask to go and didn't know existed. How many consumers would have assured Howard Schultz (Starbucks) they would stand in line to spend $4 for a cup of coffee in a paper cup? 4. The Compulsion to Use Legal and Political Force to Protect Your Business: If companies rely on legal and political force for competitive advantage, they are doomed. Lawsuit and protectionism strategies drain a company of resources, money, vision, and the urgency to reinvent itself in the face of new technological and competitive realities. A company must proceed "as if" there is no "protection" because, ultimately, there isn't. 5. The Compulsion to Do Anything as Long as You're Doing Something: Many businesspeople respond to the Copycat Economy with manic bursts of action, such as acquisitions, restructuring,

One the most formidable challenges most organizations now face is how to differentiate themselves from the competition, especially at a time when customers have more choices and more control of the purchase decision, and when, as Oren Harari observes, "In every industry, a very small number of organizations are fast, fit, healthy, and clearly at the forefront. They are followed by a few pretty good wannabes nipping at their heels. These groups are clearly ahead of `the pack' - that large, undifferentiated bulk of companies of all shapes and sizes that don't stand out and don't draw the kind of positive attention from customers and investors that they'd like." Harari focuses in this book on how to break away from - and then stay ahead of -- "the pack" and thereby thrive in what will probably continue to be a "Copycat Economy," even as a process of natural selection seems to eliminate faster than ever before those organizations that are unwilling and/or unable to adapt to new (albeit painful) realities in their competitive environment. Throughout Harari's narrative, his emphasis is always on "how" and, when appropriate, he includes a brief explanation to establish a context within which he shares insight and recommended action items. All of those organizations that succeed in breaking from a given pack understand the power of "a radically compelling value proposition, hard economic logic, and fast efficient execution." Each involves a mix of entrepreneurial spirit, foresight, and discretion as well as prudence. Harari characterizes that mix as "calculated reinvention." With regard to the first, "a radically compelling value proposition," Harari introduces "Curious, Cool and Crazy/Calculated Reinvention Launch Pads" in Part I that can propel almost any organization in six strategic directions. For example, "Dominate or Leave" which makes sense if an organization does not have both domination and profitability. How to know that? Harari points out that no company can "be all and do all" profitably. For sustained competitive advantage (and for breaking from the pack), companies must determine which markets and value propositions they can dominate (be the best at, be the benchmark for innovation, be the ones that set the agenda for the industry), and then avoid or exit those they can't. He also emphasizes the need for metrics for measurement that revolve around profit as well as organic growth rate, customer retention rate, and rate of retention of most valuable employees. The importance of "hard economic logic" is especially important when M & A activities are involved. In Chapter Ten, "Consolidate for Cool," Harari identifies and then examines eight reasons why M & As fail (Pages 230-237) and eight motives which have made M & A "the number-one `go to' growth strategy for many executives despite the fact that a high percentage (estimates range from 65%-80%) either fail or fall far short of expectations. Many readers will especially appreciate Ha

When reading this book, everything the author says sounds so "common sense", so you're left wondering why so many people behave differently (but luckily they do, otherwise there would be no room for improvement). Tightly packed with clear analyses and useful advices, "Break from the Pack" will definitely help you if you decide you'll be trying to be different from your competitors.

As they say, if you're not out front the scenery never changes. This book will really help guide your thinking on how you can change your business to stay in front of the competition. It's a quick read, with interesting real life examples. Yet it makes it's point and gives you things to think about in relation to your own business. Well worth it.

Harold Rosenberg's famous shot at his fellow New York intellectuals as "a herd of independent minds" has been usefully applied to almost every kind of grouping people make for themselves. It is as true of teenagers in their conformist non-conformist fashions, college students in their uniform way of becoming independent from the parents whose money they use to fund this process, and it is also true of business people. Why is this so? Maybe part of it is similar to the behavior of herds of animals that live around predators. Staying in the herd increases your chance of survival. Wandering off through carelessness or being too slow or ill leads to becoming someone's lunch. However, in human activity that is often competitive, it is staying in the herd that can lead the immutable laws of economics to allocate your resources elsewhere and you starve to death. Oren Harari opens the book describing his observations of a long distance race. The first group was about three people who were fit, full of energy, and alone. In back of them was a slightly larger group that was huffing and puffing trying to catch up to the first group that was setting the pace. Then came the huge pack - the herd - who were plodding, sweating, and straining to simply not trip over each other. Finally, a smaller group brought up the rear who were having a good time walking along, but made no pretense of even being in the race in any meaningful way. This is quite an apt metaphor for competing in business. This book provides interesting perspectives on ways you can rethink your company's position in the marketplace and get into that front group and leave the big pack behind. Obviously, you will have to do things differently than the way "everyone else does it". It will make you uncomfortable and being that alone may make you fear being noticed and eaten. But it is in the pack that the competitive business faces the most danger. After framing his argument in the prologue, Harari divides the rest of his book into three parts. The first is resisting the pull of the pack. He describes "commodity hell" and how living in the copycat economy is a form of doom. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on "how to lose". He explains ten compulsions we face that keep us mired in the pack stepping on each other's toes breathing bad air. His founding principles for success are based on continuous and calculated reinvention and being curious, cool, and crazy in order to build a culture of disciplined lunacy. Good stuff. Part II provides a series of six chapters on how to break from the pack. Dominate or leave (which does not necessarily mean being the biggest in the industry), putting the pieces together for a higher cause (which involves the customer as well as your employees), build a defiant pipeline (of products and services - this involves leading the marketplace rather than waiting and reacting), taking your customer to an impossible place (a very interesting noti