As part of their annual strategy refresh, a top CEO leads her team in a "blank sheet" exercise: designing a new company from scratch to compete with them. This proactive self-disruption forces them to identify their own weaknesses and market gaps, generating fresh ideas to incorporate into their actual business strategy.
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To foster innovation, Kanji's marketing team holds a "Shark Tank Day." Team members pitch creative ideas to a panel of "sharks" representing their buyer persona. This gamified process surfaces proactive strategies (like an AI-powered "roast your tech stack" tool) and secures cross-functional buy-in.
Like basketball coaches who make players analyze game film to spot momentum shifts, business leaders can use 'what-if' teams. By regularly gaming out hypothetical market shifts or competitor actions, they train the organization to recognize and seize real opportunities when they arise.
Founders resist necessary pivots due to sunk costs. To overcome this, use the 'Day Zero' thought experiment: If you were dropped into your company today with its current assets, what would you do? This clean-slate mindset helps you make the hard, fast pivots required to find a real problem.
Most startups focus on product or technology innovation, but Gamma's CEO argues that innovating on organizational design is an equally powerful lever. This means rethinking hiring, management, and team composition to create a competitive advantage.
To prevent its new mobile app from simply replicating its existing web platform, Irembo framed the mobile team's goal as competing with the web team. Their key metric was shifting user traffic from web to mobile for the same services. This created a competitive dynamic that forced innovation and differentiation.
Instead of competing in a crowded field on standard terms, redefine the competitive landscape. Build your strategy around a game that only you can win, where your firm's unique capabilities—like talent development or add-on execution—become the most important factors for success.
Maintain a running list of problems you encounter. If a problem persists and you keep running into it after a year, it's a strong signal for a potential business idea. This "aging" process filters out fleeting frustrations from genuinely persistent, valuable problems.
After retiring, Mary Kay created two lists: every negative experience from her career and the ideal alternative. This second list became her business plan. This method of systematically inverting personal and industry pain points is a powerful framework for creating a disruptive and employee-centric company.
![Mary Kay Ash: The Greatest Saleswoman In History [Outliers] thumbnail](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/e183b016-cec7-11f0-90ea-27c38ce45de8/image/2d94065a7777f6297ba9350dd7be6b66.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)
To combat complacency, Dell manufactures a crisis. He instructs his company to imagine a new, faster, more efficient competitor will put them out of business in five years. Their only path to survival is to proactively become that company first.
