Willy Wonka Differentiation

This blog is about business differentiation, but not just small points of differentiation – I’m interested in differentiation that is unexpected. Differentiation that re-defines the game, violates expectations, and grabs attention. We have already seen some great examples of this – Terracycle who built a business on worm poop and waste, Moller who is working [...]

Hottest Curry in the World

A few years while living and working in London I was fortunate enough to attend a team lunch at The Cinnamon Club, an upmarket Indian restaurant in Westminster. At the time the restaurant was (and may still be) part owned by Sir Michael Caine. I was intrigued to find that this same restaurant recently received media [...]

Little Miss Matched Socks

If you follow the marketing legend Seth Godin you will be familiar with the company Little Miss Matched, which  started off by selling sets of three mismatched colourful socks to girls. The company decided to take advantage of the issue that one sock in a pair always gets lost, so why not sell socks that [...]

The Unexpected Plup

Close your eyes and imagine you are about to purchase a bottle of water. As you select your bottle of water, what does it look like? Probably something like one of these bottled water options:   Now imagine as you go to select your bottle, you notice something new, something different: Plup is also bottled water, [...]