Break from the pack

Welcome to the Copycat Economy, where everyone has access to the same resources and talent, where the web is the great equaliser, and where the market’s twin foundations are imitation and commoditisation.

It’s a world marked by the ‘me-too’ syndrome, where competing vendors benchmark, imitate, and build off each other, offering customers an ever-increasing array of choices, most of which lookpretty much the same.

First of all, keep in mind that it’s not only stickers that become commodities.

Every organisation faces the challenge.
    
IBM is discovering that even its traditional discrete consulting services are slowly becoming commoditised, a term IBM itself uses.

Companies like Wipro — based in Bangalore, India — are replicating some of IBM’s consultative offerings at much lower prices, which is why, to IBM’s chagrin, companies like Louis Vuitton and Target are turning to Wipro for basic IT and datamanagement expertise.

When I consulted at a major mutual fund a few years ago, I was told at the first meeting, “Oren, the first thing you have to know is that MFs are commodities.”

The company vice president said, “There are thousands of MFs that compete directly against ours, and over the long haul, we pretty much have the same yields and performance, so our main job is to figure out how to differentiate ourselves so that investors will choose our products.”

Twenty years ago, not many people even knew what MFs were, much less invested in them.