In typical 37signals fashion, the wisdom in these pages is edgy yet

Decommoditize your product
If you're successful, people will try to copy what you do. It's just a fact of
life. But there's a great way to protect yourself from copycats: Make you
part of your product or service. Inject what's unique about the way you
think into what you sell. Decommoditize your product. Make it something
no one else can offer.
Look at 
Zappos.com
, a billion-dollar online shoe retailer. A pair of
sneakers from Zappos is the same as a pair from Foot Locker or any other
retailer. But Zappos sets itself apart by injecting CEO Tony Hsieh's
obsession with customer service into everything it does.
At Zappos, customer-service employees don't use scripts and are allowed
to talk at length with customers. The call center and the company's
headquarters are in the same place, not oceans apart. And all Zappos
employees--even those who don't work in customer service or fulfillment--
start out by spending four weeks answering phones and working in the
warehouse. It's this devotion to customer service that makes Zappos unique
among shoe sellers.
*
Another example is Polyface, an environmentally friendly Virginia farm
owned by Joel Salatin. Salatin has a strong set of beliefs and runs his
business accordingly. Polyface sells the idea that it does things a bigger
agribusiness can't do. Even though it's more expensive to do so, it feeds
cows grass instead of corn and never gives them antibiotics. It never ships
food. Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime and go anywhere (try
that at a typical meat-processing plant). Polyface doesn't just sell chickens,
it sells a way of thinking. And customers love Polyface for it. Some
customers routinely drive from 150 miles away to get "clean" meat for their
families.
*
Pour yourself into your product and everything around your product too:
how you sell it, how you support it, how you explain it, and how you
deliver it. Competitors can never copy the you in your product.

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