The Paradox of Uniqueness
#SystemThinking #CrossIndustryLearning #Paradoxes #ProblemSolving
Early in my career, I learned a curious lesson about how organizations perceive their challenges.Multiple clients before they engaged me, had an ask. "Before we sign anything, share few case studies where you’ve solved a similar problem, in a similar industry, in a similar geography."
Fair enough. Not only do they want to validate my experience of solving similar problems, seems they are interested in learning from others' experiences, I thought.I did exactly that. I shared examples, data, and results from organizations that had navigated almost identical terrain.
A few weeks later the engagement starts.Same set of people started saying , "Please don’t tell us what worked elsewhere. That won’t work here.We’re unique."
This brought back memories of Prof Boman Moradian , who used to teach Operations Management to our batch at SPJIMR. In his indomitable style he would say "To every such person I say, The only thing unique about your business will be the unique way in which it will die"
After couple of such experiences, as a thought experiment I came up with same solutions but instead of presenting them as experiences from other clients , I started presenting them as "Unique frameworks customized for your environment & ecosystem". These got accepted very quickly.
I’ve seen this pattern repeat in large corporates, startups, and government agencies. On one hand, leaders want reassurance that their problem is solvable and that others have walked the path before. On the other, they want their context to be acknowledged as special.
Here’s the truth: your challenges are rarely as unique as you think. And that’s actually a huge advantage. There are numerous example of organizations who were in dominant positions, thought they were unique & hence dismissed emerging trends and competition to their own peril. Lets look at few such examples
Example 1 : BlackBerry Missing the Touchscreen Revolution
For much of the 2000s, BlackBerry wasn’t just a phone; it was a symbol of power. Heads of state, CEOs, and investment bankers clutched its secure, tactile devices as lifelines to their empires. The company’s leadership believed their security moat and enterprise-first DNA made them unassailable.
When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, BlackBerry watched from a distance, convinced that consumer toys couldn’t threaten its corporate fortress. But the world was shifting beneath their feet. Phones were evolving from communication tools to personal computing platforms, reshaping what users valued.
BlackBerry didn’t fail because it lacked technology; it failed because it mistook its uniqueness for immunity. By the time it tried to adapt, ecosystems had outpaced products, and habits had shifted irreversibly.
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Example 2 : BlockBuster - Mistaking Scale for Shelter
Blockbuster’s with more than 9,000 outlets worldwide, commanded the home entertainment market through operational excellence and physical dominance.
Yet when Netflix emerged with a mail-order model and later, streaming Blockbuster dismissed it as niche. Their belief: scale, brand, and late fees would keep challengers at bay. But the category itself was mutating. Entertainment was moving from physical aisles to digital instantaneity, from scarcity to abundance.
Blockbuster saw Netflix through the lens of a rental business, not as a harbinger of a new consumption paradigm. That myopia cost them everything.
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Example 3 : Borders - Failing to read the shifts
Borders built its identity around the joy of browsing: warm lighting, curated shelves, community spaces. It wasn’t just a bookstore; it was an experience.
When e-commerce began reshaping retail, Borders made a fateful decision. Believing their in-store magic was their true differentiator, they outsourced their online operations to Amazon in 2001. What they saw as a tactical partnership was, in reality, a strategic abdication.
While Amazon honed logistics, data, and scale, Borders stood still convinced their uniqueness lay in the physical. They never telescoped outward to see that the terrain of competition had shifted. By the time they turned around, the future had been take over by a competitor.
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When we zoom out, these stories have a common thread: they saw their strengths, contexts, or models as too unique to learn from others and paid a steep price.When we see our problems as completely unique, we subconsciously cut ourselves off from a rich pool of insights.
The most innovative organizations don’t ignore these; they study them closely. They look sideways across industries, geographies, and disciplines to find patterns, metaphors, and tested solutions.Recognizing that your challenges are not wholly unique is liberating. It means you can stand on the shoulders of others, accelerate learning, and avoid reinventing the wheel.
In the next blog, I’ll explore the other side of the pendulum why blindly copying models from elsewhere often fails, and why translation and adaptation matter just as much as openness to learning.
Very insightful JJ. Thanks for sharing, especially the examples.
Good insights Jayram Joshi! But it could also lead to a pradox that a workable solution elsewhere is being force fit to another situation just because it worked for someone else in a different circumstance (just as dangerous as searching for a unique solution). According to me it needs to be a mixture of situational awareness along with clear objectives to run a business which would lead to a good unique / repeat solution.
Lovely post. Medical, Armed forces, Aviation, Sales, even Mountaineering … great fields to learn from.