Differentiation (sadly not) for dummies.
I’m not sure about your situation, but I was thinking recently about how people don’t really use the term differentiation anymore. It isn’t that we’ve stopped attempting to be different but rather that it’s ceased to be something that we have to remind ourselves to do. It’s become obvious that we have to be different.
However, I think there’s also something else going on here. I think that differentiation is also not discussed because it’s become much easier to create. As our (post) postmodern culture has further fragmented and splintered, it’s become fairly simple to find an opposite position or point of view for any given position or point of view.
Faced with a bevy of competition in almost any category, it is a straightforward exercise to determine the codes or basic assumptions of the category and to take an opposing position. While opposing positions might have been niche in the past – today every position is a niche position and therefore the economics of being different aren’t necessarily worse than the economics of conforming. However, unless you are a market leader (and even then as Microsoft can attest) the upside of being a category breaker greatly outweighs the upside of being just another offering.
While differentiation is now easier to create, it’s still not easier to achieve. In compiling the list above I scratched my head for ages to think about good examples and came back to the same old chestnuts. Because while it’s now easier than ever to imagine how to differentiate it still requires courage to actually follow through on it. And that means sticking to decisions and choices that aren’t conventional and not listening to feedback and research which inevitably pushes you further back into conventional territory.