Book: Cheat!

Differentiate yourself by innovating outside your industry.

Average performance won’t win you the game. That’s why differentiation is crucial. Too often, we look at our immediate surroundings and competitors for this. The more we focus on them, the more we start to resemble them. And that’s precisely not the intention.

If you want to be distinctive, you have no choice but to innovate. Branchmarking stands for smartly applying best practices from unrelated industries within your own organization to become distinctive and stay that way. In this book, you will come across many best practices from various industries and countries. You will see that there is much to learn from history, biology, and other sciences.

“It is a title that can evoke mixed feelings. And that is precisely the intention of the author of Cheat! The core of this book on smart innovation is to make use of what is already being done in other industries. By combining such business processes, revenue models, or customer approaches with what is customary in your own industry, surprising innovations can emerge. Step outside the beaten path and ultimately achieve a truly distinctive ability for organizations. Rob Adams, the author of Cheat!, is a strong advocate of this approach. What he presents provides you with enough guidance in this search process.”