successful zags usually test poorly with consumers before they’re launched. They fare pretty well on the “good” axis, but then attract so many negative comments on the “different” axis that their companies get nervous and reject them.

since people now have a choice, they’re choosing to spend more time on the Web, where communication is more like a conversation than a sales pitch. They’re also listening more to their friends, in a return to the word-of-mouth culture

PRODUCT CLUTTER. Too many products and services. FEATURE CLUTTER. Too many features in each product. ADVERTISING CLUTTER. Too many media messages. MESSAGE CLUTTER. Too many elements per message. MEDIA CLUTTER. Too many competing channels.

Customers today don’t like to be sold—they like to buy, and they tend to buy in tribes. Better advice for companies is to focus their communications not on a USP but on a UBT—a Unique Buying Tribe—that has a natural affinity for the company’s products or services.

Today 92% of people skip the commercials on their recorded programs. How has the industry responded? By hitting further below the belt—sneaking advertising into editorial copy, television content, movies, and events, all under the euphemistic heading of product placement.

If nobody’s doing it, you’d be crazy to do it yourself, right? Wrong.

Instead, you have to find the spaces between the fielders. You have to find a zag.

aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

Today, the intellectual capital barrier is showing cracks. Yesterday’s patents are losing their value as companies leapfrog each other in a constant race to innovate. Not only that, using intellectual property as a barrier can sometimes hurt companies rather than help them, since it can slow the growth of the business ecosystems