In business, we’re often afraid that someone’s going to try to eat our lunch; steal our idea, or copy our product, or walk off with our customers.

That’s certainly something to worry about if the stuff you make or the things you do are fungible. But what if the the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?

Let’s say the inputs to your offering are 1 + 2 + 3.

• Let’s say that 1 is a key staff member.
• Let’s say that 2 are the raw materials.
• Let’s say that 3 is making and delivering the product.

Let’s say that 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, and that customers are willing to pay 10 bucks for it. You make 4 bucks. Great.

Now let’s say that your key staff member resigns. Worse, let’s say that they resign to start their own gig. They know the processes, and they can source the raw materials because raw materials are commodities.

So now your new competitor has 1 + 2 + 3, and what do you have? A problem, that’s what.

But what if the the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?

What if, in your hands, 1 + 2 + 3 = 12?
What could constitute the incorporeal 6 bucks?

The experience. The way you make your customers feel.

By thinking in terms of experiences, you can orchestrate a series of moments that are ephemeral and non-fungible.

You can get a coffee from here, and you can get a coffee from there, and you just prefer here. The coffee is the same, but the experience is different.

At the moment, that mostly occurs by happenstance. Someone with a lot of domain knowledge and empathy manages to create great experiences without being able to explain why.

But that’s changed. People are now being intentional about experience design, and insodoing, they’re building moats.

A) 1 + 2 + 3 = 12 and sells for 10 bucks
VS
B) 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 and sells for 10 bucks.

Customers are going to choose A) every time.

Or you could choose to capture that extra value and sell A) for 12 bucks and have 2 bucks more than the competition to make your product better, or to spend on additional marketing, or hire extra hands.

Regardless, it’s almost impossible to lose when you are creating additional value out of thin air by thinking in terms of experience.