“The person with the most flexibility wins.”
For me, this is closely related to another important perspective:
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
Charles Darwin
Here are a few of my general interpretation and application of the above in business:
– We must always be ready to adapt to changes. The ones who adapt the fastest and the best will have the advantage.
– Change is the only constant. So you can wait till change is forced onto you. Or you can actively push for change and be the changemaker (aka. innovator) and lead.
Eg. The mobile phone industry introduces new innovation and tech in a regular, almost yearly basis, much faster than necessary.
Technically their just one-year old tech is more than sufficient to last for years.
In fact, this industry used to focus on how long their tech can last. (Stability-focused.)
Now they’re focusing using change, progression, innovation as their competitive advantage.
You can see similar strategies in other industries like fashion, beauty (Gillette regularly “cannibalise” their old models with new ones, even though they’re the most dominant market leader), etc.
– It’s also one of the biggest reasons why we purposely evolve our business model, even though we didn’t have to and it was a very uncomfortable thing to do.
– Having options / choices is better than having none. Depending on just one thing increases risks.
So it’s useful to increase options.
Start with being focused for speed. Then we must implement deliberate diversification to balance speed with stability.