Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company
In the age of disruption, companies today can’t succeed by just doing things a little better than their competitors – they need to stand out by standing up for something special, said Fast Company Magazine’s co-founder Bill Taylor.
“In an era of hyper competition and non-stop dislocation, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special,” Taylor said at this week’s Communitech 2010 Tech Leadership Conference in Kitchener, Ont. “Originality has become the acid test of strategy.”
Carrying out field studies for his recent book, “Mavericks at Work,” Taylor said a commonality among winning organizations is their propensity to stand for important ideas that focus around shaping the future trajectory of the industry in which they operate. “The most successful organizations today of any size don’t just try to out compete their rivals,” he said. “They aspire to redefine the terms of competition in their industry by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world filled with ‘me too’ thinking.”
For years, most companies were satisfied operating in the middle of the road, Taylor speculated. “That’s in theory where all the customers were,” he said. “That’s what felt safe and secure. But today, with so much pressure, so much change, so many new ways to do just about anything, the middle of the road has become the road to ruin.” Instead, companies need to carve out a niche and become the “most” of something. “The most elegant, the most simple, the most exclusive, the most affordable, them most global, the most local,” Taylor rhymed off.
One company that has gotten the recipe just right in Taylor’s mind is ING Direct, the Internet-based savings bank founded in September 2000 by Canadian Arkadi Kuhlmann. “This is a guy who basically invented a completely different way to be a bank. No brick and mortar branches, no ATM machines, no paper-based chequing accounts – just genuine, strategic commitment to re-imagine what would it be to be a bank in the 21st century,” Taylor said.
