Every person and company has to find their advantage, their competitive edge, their talent in order to succeed. In their search to find advantages, most people and companies look at the same things. People usually look at skills, knowledge and experience, while companies look at price, quality and new technologies.
While these advantages are certain to bring the extra value in order to succeed, when most people compete on the same level it always becomes harder to get to the top and keep yourself there. This is the point where creativity and innovation kick in by finding and exploiting other characteristics that can become an advantage.
An excellent example is Starbucks. Even if their main products are coffee based drinks, they don’t serve the best coffee in the world, not even by far. As they state, they are not even in the serving coffee business, but in delivering joy. They are a coffee shop, selling coffee, but their focus – their advantage – is the joy they deliver.
The same is true for employees. Most try to fit the job description, to have the necessary skills that everyone has in order to better fulfill the job requirements, but they lack that something special. When having to choose from a large mass of people with almost the same skills, people will start to look for that element that makes the difference. Most times it’s about the attitude, about having the courage to stand out, to be noticed and to be memorable.
These people are the ones who break the rules, the ones who change everyone’s mood when they enter the room, the ones who will never give up or back down. They are the artists, the ones who find their talent and exploit it to the maximum.