Month: June 2020

The Innovator’s Dilemma begins as an exciting new market opportunity presents itself.

Blue enters the market by providing a solution. It solves some customer problems by leveraging its new Circle technology.

Blue doubles down on Circle technology and continues to grow. Eventually, it captures the majority of the market.

But markets aren’t stagnant. They constantly change. Go back and look how the corners of the outlined area have been evolving. This represents new customers with unique needs who Circle technology can’t serve.

Then Green enters the market. It’s a startup pioneering Triangle technology. It serves the needs of the corner of the market. Blue doesn’t change because Circle is still a better solution for the majority. Besides, it might lose focus if it tries to specialize in Triangle.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The Innovator’s Dilemma was created by Clayton Christensen.

Discuss this on Twitter

I love to read about how great people accomplish great things. It’s similar to getting advice — I’m left with a high. I imagine that if I can follow the instructions, then I too will accomplish what they have. It’s a logical and tantalizing idea: follow the prescription, get the reward. In practice, it tends to fall short.

Kapil Gupta and Naval Ravikant did a great interview where they touched on this pitfall.

The catch is, to achieve something truly remarkable, you have to do something new. It’s practically in the definition. Copying others can help you learn a domain. Imitation is good practice. But to do something new — to create art — you inevitably have to write your own script.

I expanded on these thoughts in a Twitter thread here, also touching on how prescriptions can act like false Gods.

I used to believe that Distractions Were Bad. Time spent away from “the work” when you’re “supposed to be doing the work” means less work “gets done”. Right? Over time, I’ve come to see that it depends.

I’ve studied and tried all kinds of formal techniques for solving problems and being creative. Here’s a list I put together: Thinking Toys. Don’t get me wrong, these can be useful. But they’re no panacea.

When doing creative work, I now embrace distraction. What’s my creative process? Switching every few minutes between “the work” and “the distraction”. Sometimes it’s Twitter. Sometimes it’s looking out the window. Sometimes it’s trimming my cuticles. Whatever the distraction of the moment, I think it helps. Distractions make me more creative.

Whenever you make a choice, you’re probably making a mistake. Not that you necessarily made the wrong choice out of the ones in front of you. Rather, you probably missed a better alternative.

There’s almost always a better way, a third way. Find the third way.

For me, the first hurdle to finding the third way is being aware that it’s possible. I often already have an option I prefer. Why keep looking?

The second hurdle is not trying hard enough to brainstorm. Sitting down for 10 minutes with a pad of paper is extremely powerful, and harder than it sounds. I am reminded of how difficult this is whenever I actually try.

The third hurdle is your ego ⏤ be extra cautious when you already prefer an option. It will be hard to let go of it to explore alternatives.

I’ve written before on how to find a third way: undichotomizing

Did you know you can change how you feel?

I often forget that my feelings and reactions are practiced responses. A meditation technique called Tonglen is useful for playing with this.

The instructions are simple: breathe in what you resist, and breathe out what you desire.

Each time you breathe in, focus on the unpleasantness, the fear, the anger, or whatever. Each time you breathe out, give to the world what you seek for yourself ⏤ success, calmness, compassion, love.

You’ll notice your present feelings impacted immediately. With practice, you start to rewire the reactions which generate the contractive experiences in the first place.

And with different feelings, come different actions…

Here’s a longer write up I did on Tonglen.