How I find market-bending strategies (without even trying)

This is the most powerful strategic technique that exists.

So powerful in fact, that it isn’t only responsible for the development of the world’s best businesses —— it actually undergirds the development of every living thing on the planet.

Oh, and what’s even better: it’s so easy that you barely have to lift a finger.

The technique I speak of?

Strategic mutation.

To understand what this is and how it works, you first need to appreciate the basic parallels between the business world and the natural world. I’ve written about this many times before but here’s a quick recap.

• Basically businesses in the market operate in just the same way as organisms in an ecosystem. That means that they evolve to try and find symbiotic “fit” with the other things around them, with each doing a unique job that adds up to a fully functioning whole. When people speak of “product / market fit”, they are actually talking about exactly the same thing as Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” – where “fit” doesn’t mean “strong”, but rather fitting with the other things around it, like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

So healthy businesses and healthy organisms are those which complement the other businesses / organisms around them, and so earn their share of resources.

Unhealthy ones on the other hand are those which “double up” on the job of another business / organism, and so get crowded out and starved of resources. In business we call this commodification. In nature we might see it happen when an invasive species (e.g. a grey squirrel) displaces a native species (a red squirrel). There’s only room for one squirrel, just as there’s only room for one of a given type of business!

Understanding all of this, it’s clear that strategy’s job is help you find that unique and symbiotic role for your business in the wider ecosystem.

All very familiar stuff to those of you who’ve been reading my stuff for a while.

Now, here’s the interesting bit.

If we accept the fundamentally Darwinian nature of markets, then that means we can adopt other precepts from evolutionary thinking when developing a killer strategy. And one of these precepts is the idea of mutation.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the gist of it. Essentially they say that organisms find their unique role through a series of “random” mutations – some of which are advantageous, and some of which aren’t. When an advantageous mutation occurs, that gives the organism a leg up in its battle for resources, and voila, the mutation becomes the norm.

Well, exactly the same thing happens in business.

In fact in the real world, away from abstract theorising, this is pretty much how all powerful strategies are developed.

• First companies carry on about their business in their usual day-to-day way
• However as they do it inevitably they accidentally do a few “random” things which nobody planned (mutations)
• Some of these random things are neutral, some are negative, and some are positive
• Positive ones, that result in improved profitability / traction for the business, serve as a clue for how that business should ideally evolve if it is to find its optimal fit in the market
• And then, as it leans into them, it starts to thrive

In fact, there is only one meaningful difference between natural genetic mutation and strategic mutation in business:

YOU have to make it happen.

Whilst a species can organically drift in the optimal direction for its own flourishing, with no conscious effort on the creature’s part, a business can’t do that. Or not often anyway. Instead it relies on the leader noticing the beneficial mutations, codifying them into strategy, and doing them on purpose.

And because most leaders aren’t thinking this way, this rarely happens.

Every day, in almost every business, beneficial mutations are taking place, which hold the key to that business’ explosive growth, and almost all of them are completely ignored. They are ignored because, being mutations, they are not deliberate. And hey, we don’t like to give attention to wins that we had no part in.

But these mutations are so much more powerful than the clever ideas you might come up with on paper, because they are happening all the time; giving you your very own “always-on research lab”, which is constantly testing the market.

So how do you take advantage? Easy. Just notice.

1. Catalogue the accidental successes you have, which weren’t specifically designed for planned for
2. Take note of the things that come “easily” to the business without you really trying
3. Observe the differences between how the customer thinks about what you do, and how you think about what you do
4. Look for the statistical anomalies where you perform well / poorly (e.g. specific geographies, specific retail channels, specific audiences etc.)
5. Ask “what is the accidental reason this happened?” whenever something goes well

All of these have the potential to reveal crucial mutations which you may want to capture, and evolve into a deliberate strategy.

You see how it’s not that hard?

The work is being done for you, as automatic as breathing.

You’ve just got to pay attention.