Fighting Our Similar-But-Different Instincts:

Nature has endowed us with a plethora of protective instincts designed to keep us safe and healthy. When we come into contact with something that has the potential to burn us, we instinctively pull our hand away. When we are bitten by a mosquito, we instinctively swat it away. Perhaps most famously, we were born with the flight or fight instinct, which allows us to choose one of two reactions in the face of danger without thinking about it
Another, less well-known trait is our proclivity for analogy. We automatically categorisе everything we see as еither similar to something we've seen before or unlike something we've never seen before. The best theory (because we can't be sure) is that this instinct exists to protect us from strange things, such as harmful substances we may consume. When our forefathers saw a plant, vegetable, or fruit that looked very similar to others they'd seen before and had successfully consumed, their instinct told them that this one was also safe. If not, stay safe and skip it

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The Segway, the once-hot-as-a-pistol, next brilliant forthcoming innovation, funded by hundreds of millions in venture capital, code-named Ginger, and brought to the world by superstar inventor Dean Kaman, is a modern example of this phenomenon. The technology was incredibly sophisticated and worked exactly as it was supposed to. Nonetheless, Segway ceased production on July 15, 2020, after a 20-year journey to the ashbin of history in which it had failed utterly and abjectly

The issue was that the Segway was analogous to nothing at all. It's a small wheeled platform on which you stand upright and move forward largely motionless. You didn't sit like you would in a car, peddle like a bicycle, or steer like a motorcycle. It was one-of-a-kind, which isn't a good thing for the brain. Consider your reaction the last time you saw a rare Segway in action. For me, it was at an airport, where a police officer on a Segway was patrolling the arrivals level. On the contraption, she looked completely bizarre and laughably geeky, and I'm sure your reaction is the same every time. Our minds simply don't like it because they don't know what else to compare it to in their mental repertoire

It isn't a horseless carriage, which is one with a motor in the front instead of a horse. It isn't a motorcycle, but rather a bicycle propelled by an engine. Or a snowboard, which is essentially a snow skateboard. Alternatively, there's the now-ubiquitous motorised scooter, which looks exactly like a scooter. Those used strong positive analogies to help the brain understand and categorise this new-but-not-so-new item. Our instincts didn't send a 'be careful, I'm nervous' message, but rather a 'yup, got it, we're fine here' message. Rather than creating roadblocks in the adoption process, this smoothed it out

The Price of Our Gut Feelings

This analogy instinct, like the rest of our safety-driven instincts, has a value, but it also has a cost, especially in the modern world, where we have other ways of determining the safety of food. The problem is that, like fight or flight, it drives us to extremes: this is the same, or this is different. And, for the most part, it's somewhere in the middle. And it is our instinct to overlook that vast territory, which is to our detriment

For decades, Reuters and Thomson Financial battled Bloomberg for the lucrative global market of leasing desktop terminals that provide live data-feeds to the world's financial traders, who rely on the data to determine what, how, and when to trade. Thomson and Reuters merged in 2008 to better compete with Bloomberg by expanding their scale and investing heavily in making their terminals and feeds as high-quality and functional as Bloomberg's. Thomson Reuters, on the other hand, was never able to cut into Bloomberg's lopsided share lead and eventually threw in the towel by selling a majority stake in the company to Blackstone, which then sold it to the London Stock Exchange

What went wrong with the attempt to compete with Bloomberg? Bloomberg was in a completely different industry: communications. Its chat feature allowed thousands of traders to converse about their trades while they were trading. The social network was more important than the data feeds. Bloomberg was and continues to be unique, despite the fact that it appears to be the same at first glance

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Crest lost its long-held toothpaste market share leadership to competitor Colgate in the 1990s. Crest focused on the differences between two consumer segments during that time. One portion, Crest's, concentrated on oral health, such as preventing cavities and the dreaded gingivitis, which was described in frightening terms in the advertising language. The other portion focused on teeth that were dazzling and white. It was all about the difference to those working on the Crest company at the time: was a consumer a genuine mouth health lover or a flighty aesthetics person? However, the folks at long-time rival Colgate realised they weren't so dissimilar, and that nearly all consumers cared about mouth health and appearance, so they created Colgate Total, a product that addressed both. Crest was knocked off the toothpaste pedestal by that amazing innovation, and the Crest executives were taken aback because they had never considered consumers to be that similar
I've been watching this phenomenon of exaggerated similarity (Thomson Reuters vs. Bloomberg) and difference (Crest vs. Colgate) play out for decades. When we decide something is comparable, we have a tendency to treat it as 'the same.' This has a negative impact on company performance. However, if an event does not easily fit into the'same' category, it is pushed to the far extreme, to 'different.' It's moved from the'same' category to a 'different' one, where it's compared to fad dieters, who are superficial and ignore essentials like proactive health

The issue, of course, is that there are differences in similarity and similarity in similarity. When we allow our instincts to surreptitiously convince us that a phenomenon is entirely the same or entirely different, we throw ourselves into serious difficulties

Inoculating against the Downsides of Analogy

Until someone figures out a means to govern our instinct — and I don’t see that occurring anytime soon — we are going to have to accept that it will thrust into the centre of our consciousness an evaluation of either ‘this is the same’ or ‘this is different.’ Once that reaction penetrates our consciousness, we have the power to do something useful

Dealing with the Sameness Message

If our subconscious delivers us the message ‘this is the same as that,’ it will provide us extremely swiftly and smoothly everything that is the same about the subject on which it is focusing. We don’t need aid on that front. But we need to undertake hard deliberate effort on the differences. It is incredibly important to work through the list of what about the object in question is different. Line them up against the items that the mind has spat out instantaneously as ‘the same.’

In what ways is this rival really just not like us? Don’t stop until you have a few ways why it is substantially distinct. Does it genuinely service needs in a fundamentally different way like Southwest Airlines? Does it serve an aspect of the customer’s demands that truly we don’t give like Four Seasons? Does it create the product in the same way and sell it to the same customers but get it to the client in a different method like Avon?

In what manner is this consumer fundamentally different from other customers? Though it may buy the same thing the same method, are they different in terms of the experience they want? Do bargain outlet shoppers genuinely desire a distinct shopping experience like Costco shoppers? Don’t stop until you have something different

Is this employee fundamentally different than other employees? Even though this person has the same job at the same wage as several other employees, is this one qualitatively different because she has worked for only two firms throughout her 30-year career? Is this employee different since he is a single parent?

Perhaps the easiest sameness trap in which to fall is to consider the present and future environment in which the organisation operates as the same as the past. Because the world typically changes extremely slowly, this appears to be a safe assumption – no individual slice of time is very different from the prior slice. It is just like when friends comment on the progress in your daughter and you hadn’t seen because you see her every day. So, it is vital to ask, in the sea of sameness, what made last week or month different than all the preceding months?