There's a wonderful book out there called "Different" by Professor Youngme Moon [1] which details a few cases like what you said. Her book is about how companies can be different

One case that comes to mind is Ikea with this DIY approach. Is it the most convenient way to buy furniture? Not really given the work you need to do. Prof Moon argues that this paradoxically creates a stickiness to the brand because you have invested something (time and effort).

Another one is the "In-n-out" burger joint(Forgive me if I have gotten the name wrong). Apparently, it takes a full 15-20 minutes to get a burger here but it is thriving in-spite of this difficulty because people know they're not getting some frozen processed food.

[1]https://www.amazon.in/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngme...

Different [1] is one of my favorite books on how to find a unique niche in crowded markets. It is written by a (brilliant) marketing professor but is useful for product strategy. Also see Blue Ocean Strategy [2] on this topic.

Essential had neither of these approaches.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngm... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontes...

Yep - I don't think that I said that particularly eloquently. And it was related to a point (that I can't remember) that had been brought up earlier in the conference.

But my overarching belief about product design: - build stuff you are passionate about because you use it - listen to customers, but don't do what they say

The reason that products all start to look the same is that customer's only experience of 'better' is a competitors product. That's why you have Audi's advertising about their safety record, and Volkswagon's advertising about their performance features.

A great read on this topic is Youngme Moon's book different: http://www.amazon.com/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngme...

"Different" by Youngme Moon. This book was given out at the Business of Software 2010 conference, and she also spoke there. It's basically a call to arms for meaningful differentiation with organized business case studies of companies that have achieved it.

http://www.amazon.com/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngme...

Love Made to Stick and Founders at Work. I haven't read 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, but I'll check it out, thanks.

One excellent marketing book I recently read is Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon (no ref link: http://www.amazon.com/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngme...). She believes that going tit-for-tat on adding features and augmentations is a losing game that results in every competitor looking like one another. Instead, you should find your strength, and focus on that while resisting to focus on where your product falls short. The book is also very... poetic. She's quite a quotable writer. Good stuff.