Difference versus differentiation: beating your competition

When an entrepreneur answers the question “how are you different from your competition?” they often show a chart with their business in the upper right of a 2x2 matrix, or a chart with checkboxes next to features where their company has the most checkmarks.

I’m tempted to draw a similar chart that has “customizability of colors” and “10 letter password required” as checkboxes.  This is what we call difference without differentiation.

Simply having features your competition does not have, or having differences from other products does not mean you’ll win.  Having different color schemes likely doesn’t affect an enterprise tech company’s ability to sell its product and beat competition.

So it’s worth thinking through your competitive set in the following lens: what do customers need that the existing products don’t provide?  Why is my product better not just different?

Being different without being differentiated is a very common trap.  Make sure everything you build maps to a customer pain point and builds a solution for which they’re willing to pay. Make sure every point of differentiation between your product and your competition’s creates an advantage, not just distinction.