The Hunter and the Farmer
Everyone farms. Your “field” might be your job, your product, or your brand, but reflexively, when you find a fertile field, you farm. Your neurological preferences take over and you become protective of your craft, digging in for what you hope will be a repeat of the prior harvest.
While this tendency served us well for the last ten thousand years, it leaves us unprepared for today’s era of rapid change. To break free, we need to better understand our farming bias and learn how to awaken our inner hunter. Yes, it’s tempting to think, “But I’m already a hunter. That’s why I’m reading this book. Why can’t I just hear about those patterns and get going already!” But there’s immense danger in that impatience. If you fall into the traps of the farmer, you won’t be able to fully exploit the patterns. So listen up.
Farmer Traps vs. Hunter Instincts
The traps that hold us back are often triggered by our own success. To avoid falling into them, we need to call on our hunter instincts.
TRAP 1: COMPLACENCY → BE INSATIABLE Complacency blocks curiosity. By experimenting, prototyping, and reassessing our assumptions, we can better understand when it’s time to make a radical shift.
TRAP 2: REPETITION → STAY CURIOUS Repetition often prevents new ideas from being tested. When a booming enterprise starts to expand, there can be a strong tendency to template each store or office for consistency. Remember, this rigid repetition reduces the capacity for adaptation.
TRAP 3: PROTECTIVENESS → BE WILLING TO DESTROY At a certain point, to liberate potential it becomes necessary to destroy what has worked in the past.
Getting Momentum on Your Side
Specifically, there are six major patterns of opportunity that are created by nearly every major breakthrough product. Thus, you can use these patterns to predict or uncover future business opportunities that will be indirectly fueled by a burgeoning megatrend associated with that product.
Once you learn all six patterns of opportunity, you’ll be more adept at spotting how winning business ideas get created, making you a better innovator, decision maker, and investor.
Convergence
Chaos Creates Opportunity Adversity can be liberating, because it frees us from the obligation of our set path, awakening our inner hunter.
Multiply Your Odds of Success By aligning with multiple trends, you can increase your reach and potential, capturing incremental customers and attention.
Your Future May Dwell in the Past New technologies and ideas often flourish by borrowing aspects of proven past ideas, creating ingenious products and services.
Don’t Ignore the Fringe So-called establishment institutions often teach us that little value comes from the fringe, but outlaw culture and avant-garde culture often inspire great ideas.
Combine to Create Something New Marrying two ideas often yields something unexpectedly new, such as the many evolutions of GPS combinations. Search for concepts that can be woven together.
Divergence
Popular and Cool Are Different Too often, people mistakenly pursue what’s already popular. Popular is mainstream. It’s crowded with competitors and, crucially, it’s something that has already happened. Competitive advantage comes from searching for something cool, which is effectively the next big thing.
Identify the Mainstream (to Repel It) Increasingly, people are expecting products and services that reflect their unique personalities. There’s a natural desire to diverge from the mainstream.
Be Irresistible to a Specific Group of People Invoke deep passion in one group. BeautifulPeople.com offends many people, but to those who love it, the following is cult-like. Remember, your product does not need to test well with everyone.
Your Greatest Weakness Can Be Your Greatest Strength Red Bull became one of the most successful beverages in the world despite tasting horrible, proving that not everything has to be perfect and that disadvantage can be remarketed into advantage.
Cyclicality
Expect Repetition Many people fail to adapt to cyclical patterns, but if you expect repetition, you can open your mind to the clues that will lead to opportunity.
Act Quickly By definition, cyclical opportunities are fleeting. To win, you’ll need to move fast when you sense an opening
Anticipate the Certainty of Evolution It’s easy to get swept up in current, well-planned scenarios and the comfort of the status quo, but preparing for what’s next can produce an asymmetric advantage.
Look Beyond What Others Already See We tend to see what’s immediate, such as the collapse or surge of prices in a stock market. But major forces create cascading effects. As an economic cycle unfolds, many smaller opportunities gradually present themselves. You need to go where the opportunity will be next, not where it is.
Redirection
Don’t Fight a Force If You Can Rechannel It With redirection, you aren’t following a trend or opposing it. You’re shifting focus to your advantage and then capitalizing on the momentum. It can be an easier, more effective tool for navigating bad PR or other difficult situations.
Gamify Intended Behavior If your challenge requires a shift in human behavior, consider the effectiveness of gaming. People love to play and are already familiar with dozens of gaming models and scenarios. Gamifying is a convenient and effective shortcut to redirection.
Master the Art of Spin Politicians have long used subtle forms of redirection under the label “spin,” taking a controversy or a public outcry and channeling it in a direction more helpful to their campaign. Companies and entrepreneurs have the same opportunity, but often they miss out because, at first glance, the counterintuitive approach is more difficult to spot.
Don’t Blindly Chase the First “Big” Trend Both Frederick the Great and McDonald’s found a big idea they were eager to exploit, but like so many others, in their initial effort, they blindly raced into new terrain without considering the potential outcomes. Better to watch and wait before pouncing.
Reduction
Find a Little Idea You don’t need to find a big idea. You can also find a little idea that can be made big. That could mean something fractional, smaller, simpler, or more focused.
Map Specific Pain Points Most great ideas solve an existing problem. By thinking through the pains and problems of those in your niche, you can map out unique areas of opportunity.
Remove the Layers That Separate Supply and Demand The cost structure of a business is often bloated by markups charged by suppliers and middlemen. Identify the extra layers, and you can create value through simplification.
Isolate Niche Pockets of People It’s become easier than ever to find niche pockets of similar-minded people
Acceleration
Pinpoint Why Something Is Great To accelerate an idea, pinpoint the feature people enjoy the most, and then set out to improve that feature.
Create Distance from the Competition To create something remarkable, it’s critical to be perceived as significantly different.
You Can Accelerate Something Small You don’t need to build something as massive
Simply find an idea or your inspiration and take it to the next level with a product or service that fully engages a consumer need.
Take an Emotion or Idea and Emphasize It Running made Nicole DeBoom feel feminine and pretty, but her attire didn’t. So she zeroed in on that aspect and designed a running skirt that would help her feel dramatically more feminine.
Summary Of The Patterns Of Opportunity
Through remarkable examples of success, you’ve learned how nerds, ex-cons, fashionistas, and entrepreneurs-at-heart have leveraged the six patterns of opportunity to create breakthrough products and services.
- Convergence—combining previously unrelated products and services.
- Divergence—diverging from the mainstream (to achieve status or to customize).
- Cyclicality—following cycles that are predictable among generations or that recur in history, fashion, or economics.
- Redirection—shifting, repurposing, or repositioning a concept.
- Reduction—the simplification, specialization, or micro-targeting of an idea.
- Acceleration—identifying a critical feature and dramatically enhancing it.
