In his theory of mimetic desire, Rene Girard, a French philosopher, pointed out that we don't know what to desire, so we look up to others and imitate their desires. This leads us wanting the same things as those people which ultimately leads to competition.

He quotes "We don't fight because we want different things, we fight because we want the same things." This is the root of all competition. Competition arises when two or more than two people want the same thing and that thing is scarce.

In the world of business, every company is competing for just one thing- customers. More precisely, they are competing for customer's time and attention. And that is a finite thing. The question then lies in how to attract more people to become your customers? The answer - By not competing at all.

Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese military strategist said "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." Most companies spend countless hours on trying to beat the competition and aspiring to be the best. But the best is often short lived. The pursuit of being the best leads to even more competition.

Peter Thiel, in his book Zero to One argues that competition can make people hallucinate opportunities where none exist. Companies get so engrossed in competition that they lose sight of what matters. Winning is better than losing but everybody loses when the war isn't worth fighting.

Hence don't compete at all. Rather try to be unique, try to create your own category. Every successful company knows this. The reason Apple is so successful is because it literally embodies this philosophy. Products like iPod, iPad, iPhone are not just better music players, better tablets or better phones, they are category defining generational products. These products don't stem out of a pursuit of beating the competition, these are a result of obsessing over the question of how can we be unique? Hence the tagline— "Think different".

I would end this essay by a quote from Henry Ford, who built the world's first mass produced car, he said "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." The difference between a company that is focussed on competition and a company that is not is that the former will actually end up building faster horses whereas the later will build the car.

In a world full of competition, you don't win by being the best; you win by being unique.