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independence5 unconnected
applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

7 claims · 7 articles · 4 receipts

window

2013-08-04 → 2025-11-20

5 builders who never spoke to each other

Take the empty seat, not the one beside them

When every rival is clustered on the same ground, the opening is the space nobody occupies: a new format, an unusual unit of value, or the choice that looks irrational to a competitor optimising sensibly. Creativity is the one lever a bigger company cannot outspend you on, so spend effort there rather than on parity.

The method

  1. 01

    Escape competition by separation: rather than settling next to the brands already clustered together, take the empty space and make it yours.

  2. 02

    Define the product by the situation it gets used in rather than by the category it sits in.

  3. 03

    When every competitor in your category is optimising rationally, the choice that looks illogical is often the one that gets you noticed.

  4. 04

    Where the competition is too strong to outwork, invent a format nobody is using instead of a better version of theirs.

  5. 05

    Creativity is the one advantage over competitors you are allowed to press without restriction, so spend your effort there rather than on parity features.

What it returned

  • Paraphrases Ted Morgan's image of positioning as finding a seat on a full bus

  • Popt is pitched at notes taken while moving, mid-conversation, leaving a meeting, part way through a film, and explicitly not at sitting down to build a knowledge base.

  • Attributed to Rory Sutherland

  • Jimmy Daly's examples of format-led growth: Buffer publishing its salaries, Mattermark's daily curation, and Ben Thompson's analysis.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in positioning

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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