In the regular universe (meaning not the Inverse Universe), a key part of success involves differentation. Redefine your market; be different. Create something cool that people love, patent it, and revel in the profits that result from your sustained differentiation.

But what about in the Inverse Universe? What is the competitive strategy for that world?

To answer that question, let's consider the yin yang paradigm once again. Differentiation is a Yang concept; it is about separation. The corresponding Yin concept is unity -- or perhaps a better word would be integration. Differentiation isn't the best mindset for the Inverse Universe; success isn't really about being in a league above your competitors. Rather, it's about being able to integrate differentiating forces into a single, peaceful co-existing system that benefits all of its participants.



The value of integration strategies as compared to differentation strategies is quite apparent in looking at how online media has shaped up. In the early days of the commercial Internet (meaning the '90s), success was established through means associated with the regular universe: proprietary content that focused on "owning" all the content. Linking to other sites was not seen as strategically advantageous; the game was about owning the user, and keeping him/her on your site for as long as possible. For this reason, little emphasis was placed on search -- why invest in something that was all about giving the user away? Instead, entitlies Yahoo and AOL focused on acquiring and owning content.

And then, along came Google.

Google showed the world that linking out can be valuable. It quickly became a loved resource, garnered everyone's attention, and used this attention to catapult itself to the top of the online advertising market.

And what did Google do? They brought to us a new universe -- a world outside of Google. They used their algorithm to create a new universe for us, unique to what we said we were looking for.

Google is far from the only success story here. Sites like Digg and Del.icio.us have followed more or less the same strategy: instead of focusing on building content, they focused on giving us our own universe (or, in the case of del.icio.us, also allowing us to create our own universe). They reached out into the world beyond us, and shared what they discovered with us.

This leads us to the next principle of strategy in the Inverted Universe, which is the inversion of assets: the things you own, end up owning you.

Other Posts In This Series

Mini-Series: The 3 Principles of the Inverse Universe
Inverse Universe Principle #1: Integration, Not Differentation
Inverse Universe Principle #2: The Things You Own, End Up Owning You
Inversion of Movement: You Go to the Customer, the Customer Doesn't Go to You
Who Else is Talking About the Inverse Universe?