Abstract: In the fields of economics, management etc., many successful persons have characteristics that are out of the ordinary with a strong intuition. However, the “distinctiveness” is difficult to measure; so far there is no standard method to prove its value. This paper makes use of the data of performance of publicly offered funds that are mostly available and objective and draws on the research ideas of adopting the hierarchical clustering method for fund distinctiveness in the literatures, so as to solve the problem of measuring the value of distinctiveness and systematically analyze the value expression and the source of distinctiveness. The empirical findings show that the distinctiveness has a feature of strong value creation, and that its source is its persistent ability, relatively strong executive ability, and quick response. Although this study is based on the data of fund industry, the results can explain many phenomena in social sciences. The “distinctiveness” index constructed in this paper can also be applied to other fields of research.

Key words: out of the ordinary; distinctiveness; fund performance