Competition

“Competition holds us back from doing our best work” 
- Alfie Kohn

How often have you heard that competition in a free market leads to innovation and better ideas and products? Alfie Kohn, a well-respected educator and psychologist, suggests instead that "competition holds us back from doing our best work," making me think more critically about the value placed on competition. 

10 years ago Apple released a new phone and it changed the world of mobile technology, putting a very powerful computer in everyone's pockets. At the time the “competition” were not what you would call the best, they were companies that had competed with each other (Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft…) to make what were fairly mediocre products. They were making products that allowed you to make good phone calls and that’s about it. 

Apple came along and didn't compete with them; they solved a completely different problem. They looked at what people really wanted to do--consume and share media--and then tacked a phone onto it to make something that really is the way you want to communicate. This different approach was not caused by competition but almost the opposite. It was caused by Apple wanting to go their own way, to, as they said, “Think Different”. 

Another clear example of this is Nintendo. For a long time Nintendo had been out-played by Sony, which kept making more and more powerful games consoles. So, instead of competing with Sony, Nintendo decided to play by their own rules and create a low-powered games system that was fun. At the time no one thought this would work, and on paper they were bound to lose, but in fact the opposite happened, the Wii was a massive success.  

A final example from an entirely different field: Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors couldn't compete directly with LeBron James’ speed, size and ability so instead, they invented a completely different strategy of 3-point shooting to win.

In these examples, the “players" didn't compete but instead rethought the problem space and played by their own rules to win. Competition for the most part only leads to incrementalism; for truly breakthrough ideas you have to walk your own path which can be scary, but can have huge advantages. If by following your own path you create an innovation, in the marketplace you will have no competition. No competition allows you time and space to build your advantage. It took the Android ecosystem almost 3 years to catch up to Apple and by that time Apple had established a brand leadership position in the space that meant even though Android far outstripped Apple's sales and numbers the iPhone is still seen as the gold standard. 

To describe a problem is part of the solution. Competition stops you from fully describing the problem because it forces you to play by set rules that narrow your view. I would urge you to examine how some rules can be bent, while others can be broken, to create your own unique ideas. 

Action

I have had the opportunity to work with a number of talented creative people and there seems to come to a point where they ask the question: How do I think more strategically? As I have come to understand it, this question means they have realized that much of the creativity and innovation in a project happens in the strategic / concept phase. To have a seat at the table in such a discussion, you have to think strategically. 

Up to a certain point in most creative people's careers, especially in the digital space, they have been judged on their craft skills: how quickly and with how much quality can they make things to support an idea. But what happens when you want to be the one coming up with the ideas, how do you develop those skills? 

To answer this I created a simple framework that allows anyone to grow their own life-long creative personal culture. For the most part, I don’t like using exceptional people as examples because it can set other people up for failure. But here I'm using Picasso’s life and work to illustrate the framework, and am interested in looking at not what he did but how he did it. There are two key strategies:

Be prolific 

Picasso in his lifetime created more than 50,000 pieces of work. That is an amazing amount. But the act of making, failing and making again is one of the things that drives creativity and knowledge. One of the biggest hurdles most creative people face is the inner editorial voice that stops them from making things because they think it's not good enough or there isn't enough time to do a great job or…. The only way to get better is to practice, and by making mistakes you learn and get better.
So make things, many things
 

Be experimental  

Picasso experimented in a wide range of media and conceptual areas, which allowed him many ways to explore his ideas--even becoming a poet for two years before coming back to being a visual artist. Forcing yourself to feel like a beginner can broaden your thinking, which can sometimes be too narrowed by what your expertise in one medium tells you is possible. 

But how can you be prolific and bring more experimentation to your work? I’ve found three simple tactics that support both key strategies. 

Make your own tools

"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." - John Culkin

Everything from having your own way of creating a meeting agenda to the way you generate ideas is personal tools that help create your creative culture over the years. By documenting your own tools you create a distinct method that becomes valuable in a world of uniformity.

A fascinating example is Picasso’s unique way of setting up color palettes. Years later people are making exhibitions around the tool that was his way of creating a distinct culture for his work. 
Why Picasso's palettes were a work of art in themselves

"It is in the palettes that Picasso’s experimentation has its origins, and in that sense, they have a magical dimension.”

How do I apply this idea in my own work? In "Playing by your own rules" I explain a tool I developed: a logical framework to solve problems. 

Build your knowledge 

Writing about what you do and sharing that with your friends or the world is a way to build knowledge. Only then can you test your ideas and help others understand them. Building a knowledge base of books is good but building a knowledge base of your own writing helps you create your own personal culture around how you think. In Picasso’s prolific correspondence with his friends, he experimented with form and content, so much that these are now a key part of his legacy. See this Illustrated Letter to Jean Cocteau

An example of a knowledge resource from my own practice is collectedreading.com Over the course of a year I created a series of blog posts, each with a single focused idea and five articles or books to support the idea. 

Grow your network

“But the greatest benefit is to be derived from conversation, because it creeps by degrees into the soul.” - Seneca

This quote sums up what I mean by "network"; it’s not how many people you know but the kinds of conversations you have with them, the ideas passed back and forth over the years and the concepts which creep into your own personal culture. 

I am often asked by co-workers or friends how to learn a new skill that will take their career to the next level. I offer these suggestions: 
1. Make a list of the people you know who have the skill or experience you desire. This usually results in a fairly long list. 
2. I then ask, “When was the last time you talked to any of those people in a meaningful way about that subject?” The answer is usually never!

The point of this example is to show that most of us have a network of people that have the knowledge, it is just a matter of asking. Most people are more than happy to share knowledge when there are no strings attached. Looking at Picasso’s list of friends you can see that he carefully cultivated conversations with some of the world's most famous thinkers, writers, and artists. (Andre Breton, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre...) He created this network so he could build his own personal culture. 

The idea of the framework I'm talking about here is, for companies or individuals, to create an atmosphere in which creativity can flourish and be sustained for many years. No one but Picasso could be Picasso, but you can create your own unique personal culture in your own field. The ability to create and adapt I hope will serve you well. 

Digital Strategy ?

When someone says “digital strategy”, or just “strategy,” what comes to mind? You might think of strategic roadmaps, strategic pillars, ROI, KPI’s or a whole range of other deliverables and concepts that create a strategy.

Yet, today many of these tools are based on a foundation that is no longer true. Assuming consumer and business behaviors and activities are not going to change for 12 months is a vision of the past. In reality, the only constant is change and the rate of adoption of new forms of technology and consumer experiences is way in advance of any roadmap that tries to predict the future. So what can you do? This collection of articles looks at ways to become more agile, critiques what have come to be seen as best practices, and tries to help you avoid doing things that are actually destructive to your own success.

The SIMPLE Answer to Digital Strategy
“Most of the challenges you’ll face will be with folks trying to make this bigger (because that’s easier), slower (because that’s easier too) or stalling (because that’s easiest).”
Thought Works


Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.
“The idea of purposefully introducing into my life a service designed to fragment my attention is as scary to me as the idea of smoking would be to an endurance athlete, and it should be to you if you’re serious about creating things that matter”
New York Times


Digital Strategy is Dead
“By learning to act and iterate quickly in small ways, companies build their most sustainable competitive advantage: agility.”
Thought Works


IBM is gearing up to become the world’s largest and most sophisticated design company
“Designers bring this intuitive sense for what it [the assignment] means. They understand the power of delivering a great experience and how to treat a user as if they were guests in their own home,” says Gilbert, who’s also the company’s designated chief design evangelist.”
Quartz


Why “Agile” and especially Scrum are terrible
“The worst thing about estimates is that they push a company in the direction of doing work that’s estimable”
Micheal O Church Blog