Council Capital's Tim Schulte notes a common mistake is focusing on "how can we solve this?" instead of leveraging collective knowledge. The better first question is "who else has faced this problem?" This accesses existing resources, templates, and learnings across a firm's portfolio.
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Top entrepreneurs don't just build a product; they become historians of their domain. They study predecessors, understand market evolution, and learn from past attempts. This deep historical knowledge, seen in founders of Stripe and Airbnb, is a key differentiator and trait of the very best.
A common trait among exceptional founders is a deep, almost academic, understanding of their industry's history. They learn from every past attempt, success, and failure. This historical context allows them to innovate with a unique perspective and avoid the pitfalls that doomed their predecessors, a sign of true commitment and expertise.
Large companies often identify an opportunity, create a solution based on an unproven assumption, and ship it without validating market demand. This leads to costly failures when the product doesn't solve a real user need, wasting millions of dollars and significant time.
To break free from industry conventions, prompt teams to examine how unrelated industries have solved similar problems—like how thermostats evolved from simple dials to Nest. Posing questions like, "What if Apple designed our product?" can spur truly novel thinking.
Companies often have undiscovered IP because technologists don't always communicate their innovations effectively. A simple management practice of regularly talking to engineers and asking "What problem are you facing?" and "How did you overcome it?" can surface valuable, patentable solutions that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Experts often view problems through the narrow lens of their own discipline, a cognitive bias known as the "expertise trap" or Maslow's Law. This limits the tools and perspectives applied, leading to suboptimal solutions. The remedy is intentional collaboration with individuals who possess different functional toolkits.
A critical challenge for corporate innovation is a lack of transparency between silos. Executives report teams discovering they've worked on the same project for months, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Simple tools like shared, visible roadmaps are a crucial unlock to prevent redundant efforts.
Truly great ideas are rarely original; they are built upon previous work. Instead of just studying your heroes like Buffett or Jobs, research who *they* studied (e.g., Henry Singleton, Edwin Land). This intellectual genealogy uncovers the timeless, foundational principles they applied.
Council Capital intentionally uses the term 'toolkits' instead of 'playbooks.' This reflects a collaborative philosophy of equipping portfolio companies with tools and resources to solve unique problems, rather than dictating a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Seeing an existing successful business is validation, not a deterrent. By copying their current model, you start where they are today, bypassing their years of risky experimentation and learning. The market is large enough for multiple winners.
