A verdadeira diferenciação

Quando escrevo sobre Mongo e sobre o seu impacte nos gigantes deste mundo (por exemplo aqui, aqui e aqui) penso na continua explosão de tribos cada vez cientes da sua identidade e teimosas nas suas escolhas assimétricas. Por isso, acredito pouco no sucesso de médio-prazo das marcas compradas pelos gigantes para tirarem partido dessa boleia para o crescimento orgânico.

"A company that can show it is different from other companies, in a way that is relevant to customers, gains a major competitive advantage.
...
we are also regularly reminded of the lack of true differentiation in most mainstream global companies — and of the opportunities they are thus squandering.
.
The problem starts with the way many business people think about differentiation. To them, the unit of differentiation is an individual product, service or brand. That’s what customers see, after all, relative to what the competition can provide.
.
But differentiation needs to be sustainable; it shouldn’t live or die with individual offerings. The heart of differentiation therefore is your company’s ability to develop and promote distinctive products, services, and branded experiences on a consistent basis. It’s not the output that sets you apart, but the way that everything you do supports the product and gives it context. With truly differentiated companies, much of the distinction goes beyond the product itself.
...
Your differentiation challenge is to set apart your company as a whole, instead of staking your future on one or two isolated products. This requires you to build distinctive capabilities – to learn to do a few things really well, that few, if any, other companies can do.
...
starting in the early 2000s, the advantages of scale were mostly eliminated, in large part because of globalization, deregulation, and the rise of digital technology. [Moi ici: A tríade ainda não percebeu isto e continua a crer no Deus Único da escala como sinónimo de vantagem competitiva] It became easier and easier for small enterprises to gain customer reach and awareness (along with working capital). Large companies found themselves competing against a much larger group of rivals, and a more global group, than ever before.
...
Moreover, when you differentiate by product, you risk incoherence — because different products may require different capabilities, and that can pull your company in too many directions at once.
...
The most effective companies don’t rely on distinctive products, services or brand for differentiation; instead, they focus on creating an enterprise so distinctive that it can create many products, services and brands, each more compelling than the next."

Trechos retirados de "Your Whole Company Needs to Be Distinctive, Not Just Your Product"