Why Originality Matters in Business
Why do so many businesses end up looking the same? Same language, same strategies, same ideas, even when they all set out to be different. It is not because people lack creativity. Something else is going on.
Originality, real and sustained, is not about flair or personality. It is about decisions. What a business chooses to back. What it refuses to copy, even when copying feels safer. And whether the organisation is built in a way that allows those decisions to survive long enough to become something real.
This is why it matters: when markets shift, and they always do, the businesses with room to adapt are the ones that did not build on sameness. Originality is not about being different for its own sake. It is about being meaningfully different: different in a way your customers would notice, and miss, if it disappeared.
Why businesses drift towards sameness
Whether it is AI, scale, or just the pressure to grow fast, more and more businesses are drifting towards sameness. At first, that can feel like the right move because it feels safer. But over time, it creates a problem. When everything starts to look the same, it becomes much harder to adapt, to stand out, or stay relevant when things start to change. And things always change.
The real cost of sameness is not visible immediately. It shows up later: when the market shifts and there is no room to move, when a competitor does something genuinely different and you have nothing in reserve to respond with.
What founders say about originality
The clearest evidence for why originality matters comes from the people who have built something on it. Tash Meredith, co-owner of lifestyle and fashion retail boutique Car & Kitchen, on what originality meant at the start:
Tash Meredith, Car & Kitchen
It was important to us that our business was original because we didn’t just want to open another shop that felt the same as everything else around it. For us, originality was about bringing something fresh into the area. It’s also really personal. Everything we offer is something we genuinely love, use, believe in. Tthat’s a big part of what makes it feel different. We’re not just following trends or copying what works elsewhere, we’re sharing our own taste and perspective, and I think that’s what help set us apart.
Deya Roberts, a leader and innovator within cognitive behavioural therapy for children, on why originality was central to building CBT Hub:
Deya Roberts, CBT Hub
In my case, originality mattered because I could see how disconnected many therapy resources felt from the children and the young people that come to the sessions and that we’re meant to support. A lot of materials are overly clinical and jargon-heavy and are created without considering how young people actually experience therapy, and we wanted to create something different, not just more of the same. I wanted to build something that felt human, accessible, and genuinely useful in real-world practice. So I guess originality was never about being just different for the sake of it and, you know, doing something that that didn’t make sense, it was about creating resources that reflected the voices, experiences, and needs of young people while also supporting therapists who are often overwhelmed and under-supported themselves.
What originality actually is
Originality is often misunderstood. It is usually associated with flair, personality, or creative confidence, something you either have or you do not. But in reality, it is much quieter than that.
It shows up in decisions. The ones where there is not an obvious right answer. What you choose to back, what you are willing to question, and what you refuse to copy even when copying feels like the safer option.
“It’s better to fail in originality than succeeding in imitation” is a line worth sitting with. It is a popular debate as to whether we have as humans only got to where we have through constant imitation, which seems a reasonable position and entirely plausible when reflecting on the past. But perhaps looking to the future in our algorithm-dominated days, which makes everything way too homogenised and too simplistic, are we curious enough anymore? Do we need our curiosity piqued? Do we need more originality in our lives?
The moment things start to drift
Originality does feel risky, especially early on. But it is only when things are starting to work, when there is momentum, some funding, people paying attention, that the temptation strikes. To follow what looks proven. To borrow what is working elsewhere.
That is where things start to drift. Because when markets shift, and they always do, if you have built something based on sameness, you have got very little room to move.
What originality makes possible
Originality, on the other hand, creates space: space to adapt, space to reshape, space to rebound when things do not go to plan. And they rarely do.
That kind of difference does not come from ideas alone. It comes from belief, from judgement, and from building organisations that support original thinking rather than quietly squeezing it out. Because the truth is, most businesses do not lack ideas. They lack the conditions that allow those ideas to survive long enough to become something real.
The most resilient businesses
Growth often starts at the edge of failure, and that is where originality really gets tested. When assumptions are exposed and shortcuts stop working, the most resilient businesses are not the ones that avoid those moments. They are the ones built to respond to them. Clear enough to stay true, nimble enough to learn, and brave enough to evolve without losing themselves.
This is not about chasing difference for attention. It is about building something that lasts.
What staying original looks like from the inside
Tash Meredith on what originality means for a business now in its third generation:
Tash Meredith, Car & Kitchen
For me, being original as a founder means staying true to who we are rather than trying to fit into what people might expect us to be. It’s also about evolution. We’re now the third generation, so there’s a real sense of kind of respecting what came before us while still bringing our own ideas into it. We’ve tried to keep that independent spirit, but we’ve put our own stamp on it and made it our own, introducing new products, new influences, and a slightly different way of seeing things and doing things.
Originality is not a one-off decision. It is a commitment that has to be renewed as the business grows, as the market shifts, and as the conditions change. We explore what that looks like in part two, through five patterns that show up consistently in businesses that manage to stay original over time.
This article is drawn from episode one of the Blackline Originals podcast.
