Different - Escaping the Competitive Herd - Author Youngme Moon
Everyone tries to be different like all of the other different people. Get a tattoo, ride a Harley Davidson, wear tattered t-shirts or jeans. This brief treatise introduces you to the road to medicrocity that nearly every business, author, scientist, public speaker, and consultant tends to travel on. Why? Because it pays just enough to afford 1.38 kids and 2.7 weeks of vacation. Profound contributions to humanity are lost because people fear straying from the herd. In the authors' own words, "stop emulating and start innovating." This is not a book for sycophants who can't handle criticism and want to feel comfortable. This is a book for people that want to start taking real risks and do something special with the only life they have.
'Different' provides a highly original perspective on what it means to offer something that is meaningfully different—different in a manner that is both fundamental and comprehensive.
Author Youngme Moon identifies the outliers, the mavericks, the iconoclasts—the players who have thoughtfully rejected orthodoxy in favor of an approach that is more adventurous. Some are even “hostile,” almost daring you to buy what they are selling. The MINI Cooper was launched with fearless abandon: “Worried that this car is too small? Look here. It’s even smaller than you think.”
These are players that strike a genuine chord with even the most jaded consumers. In fact, almost every success story of the past two decades has been an exception to the rule. Simply go to your computer and compare AOL and Yahoo! with Google. The former pile on feature upon feature to their home pages, while Google is like an austere boutique, dominating a category filled with “extras.”
'Different' shows how to succeed in a world where conformity reigns…but exceptions rule.