疯狂思维

Marty Neumeier is a big fan of picking fights.Zagis his recipe bookfor making brands radically different and in it he encourages his readerto ‘take on the biggest, most successful competitor you can find’. It’s notabout kicking sand in the big guy’s face – it’s about clarifying who youare by defining who you hate. As Neumeier puts it, ‘David was nothingwithout Goliath.’1 We love an underdog story: Virgin outmanoeuvring British Airways;Ben & Jerry’s eating into Häagen Dazs’ market share; Netflix bustingBlockbuster. But as compelling as these stories are, there’s a bigproblem with the underdog narrative in business: every Davidultimately wants to become a Goliath, and every Goliath started life asa David. Virgin, Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s and Netflix were all underdogswithin recent memory. Now they are the overlords of their categories.They may retain the challenger spirit of their youth, but they carrybazookas instead of slingshots. Apple is the epitome of the underdog-turned-overlord. No matterhow big it gets, the spirit of Steve Jobs seems to have instilled in thebusiness a challenger mentality that inspires the people who work atApple to ever greater heights of innovation and profitability. Thismentality is most visible in the bitter corporate feuds Apple hasengaged in over the years. In 2010, Steve Jobs promised a‘thermonuclear’ response to perceived intellectual propertyinfringement by Google’s Android operating system.2Its competitionwith Nokia has been punctuated by legal disputes, which havereportedly cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in costs andsettlements.3,4Apple has also been locked in a bitter and long-running lawsuit with Samsung over which company owns the conceptof smartphones with rounded corners (yes!) – hundreds of millions ofdollars are also at stake here.5It seems that at every point in itsevolution, Apple has had a nemesis of some sort to rail against. Thenow-iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial was clearly aimed at annoyingIBM, as was Apple’s ‘Think Different’ mantra – IBM had been using the‘Think’ slogan since 1911 and filed the word as a trademark in 1935 (14years before registering IBM as a trademark). As IBM moved intoconsulting and B2B applications, Apple shifted its attention to taking onMicrosoft and ran a series of ‘Mac v PC’ campaigns. Google is the latestbusiness worthy of Apple’s unique brand of thermonuclear fire and fury. Every hero needs a villain In these rivalries, Apple has clearly positioned itself in the role of hero. And every hero needs a villain. There is a gathering weight of evidencethat suggests picking the right villain can make a business morecompelling to its customers. A 2012 study of Apple Mac users found thatthe more Apple users identify with the brand, the greater the joy theyfeel at reports of Microsoft’s misfortunes.6This isn’t always a positivething. A 2007 study into Apple demonstrated that Mac users who identifywith the brand don’t just take delight in a rival brand’s misfortunes –they see themselves as different from and superior to users of that rivalbrand.7 Rivalry and conflict clearly have the potential to thrill customers,but these rivalries can also be divisive and dehumanizing. What about the impact of rivalry within a business? Academicresearch suggests that finding a villain to vanquish is a potentiallypowerful motivational tool for managers. A 2010 study into thepsychology of competition concluded that rivalries between firms meansthey are less likely to fall prey to complacency.8 However, the authorsof the study also point out there’s a downside to this type of motivation:it can lead management to prioritize harming competitors overcreating shareholder or customer value, discourage management fromengaging in cross-sector co-operation in areas such as sustainabilityand corporate responsibility, and it can encourage a win-at-all-costsmentality that results in unethical behaviour or excessive risk taking. Uber is a case study in excessive competition, having spent muchof the past year dealing with the fallout from its history of engaging inprecisely these types of behaviours. In January 2017, the company paid$20 million to settle a US federal inquiry into allegations that it misleddrivers over how much they would earn. A month later, Susan Fowlerpublished a blog post detailing the toxic, misogynistic atmosphere shewas subjected to during her time as an Uber engineer. In the samemonth, Google’s autonomous vehicle spin-off Waymo sued Uber for‘misappropriating’ its technology. Uber’s president quit in March, citing‘inconsistency’ between the company’s values and his own. In April,Uber was exposed for developing a program called ‘Hell’ to spy onarch-rival Lyft and in September the company lost its licence to operatein London due to a lack of corporate responsibility.9 Taking on a nemesis can be a risky business. It has the power toinspire colleagues, as well as establish a different and desirable brandin the eyes of your customers. Bu