So recognise that our job here is not to “create” a strategy, but rather to find a strategy that is already latent in our business as it is today.

your business, I’m sorry to tell you, “is what it is”. Once you’ve launched it, it takes on a mind of its own which is totally separate from your preferences as a founder. The market interprets it in a way that suits consumers’ needs and starts to pull it in that direction. You can’t drag it somewhere else. All you can do is get in line with what

Ultimately the true competitor is anything that will steal attention from you and make you lose a sale.

If you simply develop a strategy “out of thin air”, without observing the tendencies of your business as it is, even if the idea is brilliant in the abstract it will probably fail because it won’t match the company you have. In my experience you cannot really “change” a business from one thing to another; all you can really do is focus and

You see, although the product was unhealthy compared to the health bar category, it was still relatively healthy compared to regular candy bars. Not only that, in its new category the product’s high sugar content became a strength rather than a weakness, because it allowed it to match the taste expectations that a candy consumer had – only with a

Offer compelling value to your customers. Which lots of them want. Which they can’t get anywhere else. Which your products deliver effectively. And which your brand communicates memorably.

You must remove all subjective language from your strategy and see what’s left. What is subjective language? Anything that’s in the eye of the beholder, anything that’s a judgement, words like: •Good •Great •Incredible •World-class •Best •Smart •Etc.

Back when they were successful, Nokia dominated the market position for robust, cheap, everyman phones. They didn’t realise this was their position, of course, because it was so frigging huge that it appeared to them that they simply dominated the phone market in general. What put things into relief, however, was the emergence of the iPhone – a

A slightly more sophisticated form of bad strategy is that of the generic – in other words strategies which may be functional, but which are shared by pretty much all the other brands in your category. As we shall see, the whole point of a strategy is that it sends you on a different path from anyone else. If you’re not going to do that, then why