How to Self-Disrupt Without Killing Your Cash Cow
Eating your own profitable product before a rival does is the right move more often than not. Doing it without a customer revolt is the hard part — and it's where most companies, Netflix included, blow themselves up.
Growth & Market EntryHow to Enter a Market That Should Reject You
Selling coffee to a tea nation, or small cars to a country that loved big ones, looks impossible — until you stop trying to win the whole market at once. The method is patience, a narrow beachhead, and refusing to compete on price.
Platforms & EcosystemsHow to Build a Platform Competitors Can't Dislodge
Everyone wants to be a platform because platforms compound. But most "platforms" are just marketplaces with a nicer name — they aggregate without locking in. The difference is two things: cross-side network effects and switching costs.
Growth & MonetizationHow to Turn Free Users Into Paying Customers
Freemium converts 2–5% of free users to paid on average. Spotify converts ~46%. The gap isn't generosity or scale — it's whether your free tier is engineered as a conversion machine or run as a charity.
Marketplaces & TrustHow to Make Strangers Trust Each Other Enough to Transact
Sleeping in a stranger's home or getting in their car was unthinkable until someone engineered the trust to make it ordinary. Trust isn't a feeling you hope for — it's infrastructure you build.
Org & CultureHow to Build a Culture That's a Moat, Not a Poster
Every company has values on a wall. A few have values that actually decide who they hire, how they pay, and who they fire — and those become an advantage competitors can't copy. The difference is whether the culture is load-bearing or decorative.
Pricing & MonetizationHow to Use Razor-and-Blades Pricing Without Getting Trapped
Sell the razor cheap, profit on the blades. It's one of the most powerful pricing models ever invented — and one of the most dangerous, because the same fat margins that make it lucrative are exactly what a challenger comes to undercut.
Strategy & PositioningHow to Win by Refusing to Compete
When you're losing the race everyone's running — on specs, on price, on features — the move isn't to run faster. It's to change the racetrack: find the people the whole industry ignores and build for them instead.
Transformation & TurnaroundHow to Turn a Company Around Before It's Too Late
Every great turnaround answers two questions correctly: is the core business actually dying, and is there a credible new engine to replace it? Get those wrong and you either pivot away from a healthy business or cling to a dying one. Kodak and Fujifilm faced the identical shock — and answered differently.