For example, fast fashion has become a problem in recent years. So companies have begun creating “tomorrow’s solution” with responsible manufacturing practices, sustainable materials use, and business models that promote a circular economy.

Strategic thinking, in its purest form, is the process of considering “what could be true.” Strategy is the art of the possible. What new mental model would have to be invented for this to work? What if people moved from the way it is, to a new, different way? What if a new outcome (an outcome we haven’t considered before) was possible?

Reflexive thinkers want Obvious content. Reflective thinkers want Non-Obvious content.

If you start with the way the world “is,” then try to make the way it “is” different, you are making an unconscious decision to improve within the context of a game someone else invented. You are competing. But if you start with the way it “could be,” if you assume the possible and stand in the future, you give yourself the opportunity to write new

Law #1 Thinking About Thinking Is the Most Important Kind of Thinking Expertise is the enemy of fresh thinking. Category design is a game of thinking. If you want to find success as a category designer, you have to change the way a reader, customer, consumer, subscriber, or user “thinks.” You are successful when you’ve moved their thinking from the

Dominating a new category is not necessarily about being the first to market a product. It is about being the first company to have your definition of a problem and, therefore, the solution, tip at scale. For example, Apple did not create the mobile phone category (that accomplishment goes to Motorola). But Apple did redesign the category with a

This book is meant to ignite that change, and you can read it in any sequence you want. We want you to read the table of contents, reflect on the dreams that excite you and the nightmares that scare you, then go to the precise chapter that helps you the most that day.

Category designers introduce the world to new ways of living, working, and playing. They are people and companies who move the world from the way it is, to the way they think it should be. And they do this by solving a problem people didn’t know they had or by reimagining a known problem, then creating the potential for a radically different

An easy exercise to start thinking is understanding whether you are forecasting or backcasting. Take a moment to think about which direction you are facing: Forecasting: standing in the past, looking forward, thinking about the future Backcasting: standing in a different future and living “as if” that different future already exists today This