Most business books are boring. The ones that entertain are fluff. It’s hard to find something worth reading that isn’t one extreme or the other.

Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Harvard Professor Youngme Moon, finds the right balance. It might be a little dense at times but it’s still well written, insightful, and practical. Youngme deconstructs our current marketing paradigms by showing how often we are not innovating in business but simply adding features to existing products. She then delves into the unique brands that are innovative, and how they break the boundaries of the marketplace mold. In essence, these product brands are different and they escape the competitive herd by going their own way. It’s a solid book that offers great basics to anybody unfamiliar with marketing terms, but it is also a reflective book about our modern culture.

My experience in both business and non-profit work is that a lot of organizations live and die by their marketing. And not enough people really understand marketing (myself included). Even though books like this may not provide the spark needed to set your organization apart, it can be a key voice that speaks into your thinking about branding. Reading a book like this is a bit like brainstorming … you might not arrive at just the right idea after reading it, but you’ll come up with a lot of ideas that may lead you to the right one.

Well worth reading.