Comments on: Does Conformity Increase Startup Success?

By: Shawn Hessinger

Shawn Hessinger — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 23:48:25 +0000

Interesting and I think the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Your business model should determine your level of conformity. Being different just for the sake of being different serves no legitimate business purpose and it leaves you reinventing the wheel. But offering the same identical products and services as nine other competitors may not be the brightest idea either. Just being ‘the best’ may not be enough to set you apart from the pack.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:33:11 +0000

It’s still important to build trust with customers and investors, and the unusual and unknown aren’t big trust-building factors.

By: Andy Swan

Andy Swan — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 02:47:43 +0000

Shit, there goes mytrade.

Andy Swan
Chief Buzz Officer

By: Tim Berry

Tim Berry — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 01:35:15 +0000

Fascinating. I had a professor at Stanford years ago — James March — who said “Schools teach conformity,” almost the opposite. “Education is about reinforcing the supposed right way of doing something, meaning the way we’ve always done it, the way the establishment expects us to do it.” Schools taught that the world is flat until a renegade proved otherwise.

“New ideas come from people that haven’t been indoctrinated,” he said.

That’s an interesting contrast, but I don’t think he necessarily disagreed with your point. He was talking more about real outliers, not about what makes a business successful. Tim

That quote is in a related post on my blog. Here’s the URL: http://blog.timberry.com/2007/06/do_business_sch.html