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

by Oren Harari

Everywhere, products are being commoditized, services are being imitated, and traditional barriers to market entry are collapsing. To sustain competitive advantage in today's Copycat Economy, companies must break from the pack. This book will show how. Oren Harari starts by touring "Commodity Hell," and identifying 10 common mistakes that keep companies trapped in the pack. Next, Harari introduces six strategies for propelling your organization where competitors can't follow. Learn how to dominate markets (and when to leave them); how to create a "higher cause" that will mobilize stakeholders; and how to build a pipeline of cool, compelling products, in any industry. Harari reveals new ways to take customers far beyond mere "satisfaction," and shows how to innovate in even the most prosaic areas of a business. Learn how to avoid destructive mergers, and buy what really talent, imagination, foresight, speed, rebelliousness, and inspiration. Finally, Harari offers a candid "12 Step" program for transforming leadership behavior to lead the charge -- and leave competitors in the dust.

Genres: Business

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 24, 2006

Reviews

[Dmitry · Rating 3 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Прочитав несколько первых глав, я был в восторге от книги и был уверен, что в итоге поставлю высшую оценку. Однако дойдя до середины книги, я снизил книге рейтинг на один-два балла. А когда я бросил читать, так и не дочитав последнюю четверть книги, я подумал, что справедливой оценкой будет оценка «нейтрально».

Такая метаморфоза происходит не очень часто со мной. Обычно первая четверть книги определяет будущую оценку всей книги. Но в этот раз произошло исключение. И вот о причинах этого исключения и стоит рассказать, ибо это главное, что есть в книге.

Во-первых, сама идея, что лежит в основе книги, вполне здравая. Можно даже сказать, заслуживающая внимания маркетологов. Автор пишет, что ключом к успеху служит не просто инновации в продукте, а то, что компания способна точно/грамотно/эффективно позиционировать свои бренды, создавая явную и яркую индивидуальность бренда, которая отличает бренд от других брендов той же категории. Ключом является постоянное усовершенствование, постоянная трансформация бренда, благодаря чему конкуренты просто не успевают копировать ваш бренд. Автор приводит два примера. Одним из примеров является популярная американская певица Мадонна. Автор пишет, что секрет её популярности в том, что она не просто создала новый образ, а что она постоянно менялась, меняла свой образ. И не просто копировала его с кого-то другого, а именно что создавала сама (инновация). В этом-то и секрет успеха бренда: постоянном инновационном изменении. Согласен, идея интересна и относительно новая. Вы не просто создаёте бренд с новым, т.е. незанятым никем позиционирующей идеей, а постоянно это делаете, постоянно обновляете свой бренд. Тут, конечно, не всё так просто. И как я понимаю, изменение не должно носить радикальный характер, но и не должно быть излишне поверхностным, искусственным (вот тут и должно проявиться мастерство маркетолога, где всё решает миллиметры). Всё это описывается в книге в первой четверти. И именно этой части мне хотелось поставить высшую оценку. Проблемы начались далее.

Во-вторых, когда мы прочитали первую четверть книги, мы начинаем знакомиться с огромным количеством лишнего текста. Я даже уже и не помню в точности, но точно могу сказать, что интересных примеров там нет. Дальнейший текст представляет собой вату, пустословие от которого тянет в сон. Т.е. даже до середины книги было дочитывать крайне тяжело. Автор ничего нового не предлагает и примеров интересных и ярких не приводит.

Но самое ужасное началось, когда я начал читать вторую половину книги. Автор как будто отодвигает вышеописанную идею всей книги и начинает давать банальные советы о бизнесе в целом. А лучше сказать, вторая половина книги посвящена менеджменту в самом широком смысле. Все предложения автора носят крайне общий характер из серии «дайте своим сотрудникам возможность проявить креативность». Я не понимаю, зачем автор добавил столько абсолютно лишнего текста, который уже не имеет ничего общего с главной темой книги. Всё что автор пишет во второй половине книги можно найти в каждой второй книге и каждой статье по бизнесу.

After reading the first few chapters, I was excited about the book and was sure I would end up giving it the highest rating. However, when I got to the middle of the book, I downgraded the book by one or two points. And when I gave up reading without reading the last quarter of the book, I thought that a fair rating would be "neutral".

This metamorphosis doesn't happen very often to me. Usually, the first quarter of a book determines the future rating of the entire book. But this time there was an exception. And here are the reasons for this exception, and it is worth talking about because it is the main thing in the book.

First of all, the very idea behind the book is quite sound. One might even say that it deserves the attention of marketers. The author writes that the key to success is not just product innovation, but that a company is able to position its brands accurately/ correctly/ effectively, creating a clear and vibrant brand identity that distinguishes the brand from other brands in the same category. The key is constant improvement, constant brand transformation so that competitors simply don't have time to copy your brand.

The author gives two examples. One example is the popular American singer Madonna. The author writes that the secret of her popularity is that she did not just create a new image, but that she was constantly changing, changing her image. And not just copying it from someone else, but creating it by herself (innovation). That's the secret of the brand's success: constant innovative changes. I agree. The idea is interesting and relatively new. You don't just create a brand with a new, i.e. unoccupied positioning idea, but you do it all the time; you're constantly renewing your brand. It's not so simple here, of course. And as I understand it, the change should not be radical, but also should not be unnecessarily superficial, artificial (this is where the skill of the marketer must show itself, where everything is decided by millimeters). All of this is described in the book in the first quarter. And it is this part that I wanted to give the highest grade. The problems came next.

Second, when we have read the first quarter of the book, we begin to be introduced to a huge amount of unnecessary text. I don't even remember exactly what it is about, but I can tell you that there are no interesting examples. The rest of the text is hollow, empty talk that makes you want to fall asleep. That is, even to the middle of the book was extremely difficult to finish reading. The author offers nothing new as well as examples of interesting and vivid.

But the worst thing began when I started reading the second half of the book. The author seems to move away from the above-described idea and begins to give trite advice about business in general. Better said, the second half of the book is devoted to management in the broadest sense. All of the author's suggestions are extremely general in the sense of "give your employees an opportunity to be creative". I do not understand why the author has added so much completely unnecessary text, which has nothing to do with the main theme of the book. Everything the author writes in the second half of the book can be found in every other book and every article on business.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 insights 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.

[Leader Summaries · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde Leader Summaries recomendamos la lectura del libro Salirse de la multitud, de Oren Harari.
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: liderazgo, estrategia y modelos de negocio.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro Salirse de la multitud, Estrategias para dominar el mercado evitando la estandarización y la imitación: Salirse de la multitud

[John Cipollini]

Oren Harari is a genius. He is on the faculty at U.C. San Francisco and was formerly a partner and leading speaker for Peter Drucker. In this book he dispenses advice about differentiating oneself or ones organization as a matter of survival. Very interesting case studies of once-great organizations gone wrong and occasionally reborn as something even better.

[Ang]

I will be hearing Oren Harari speak today - very exciting!