In the days of early Web design, it was fairly easy to focus on differentiation — finding ways in which to make yet another broadband provider stand out from another, and the like. But differentiation is still a major source of financial growth for companies, one that is often overlooked or ignored through unintentional apathy (lack of attention).

The potential for our discipline is that effecting such differentiation will be inherently aligned to changing experiences for the customer and the way employees do their job. A great comprehensive example of this was the remaking of Progressive Insurance, as captured in a late '90's article in Fast Company. This article highlights many of the fundamental process changes instituted and how Progressive radically changed the channels they operated in. [Anyone else notice that the best articles still today came out of Fast Company in the late '90s?] Progressive takes this one step further by featuring their own story of innovation on their site (one of those many simple things that businesses consistently fail to follow through on). They also celebrate the small detail that they've been using the Web as part of their channel strategy for 10 years (not to diminish the radical process changes that differentiates them from the competition and continues to contribute to their success today).
**Paula**