In “Better and Faster,” Jeremy Gutsche shares his insights and strategies for thriving in today’s fast-paced and constantly changing world.
Drawing on his experiences as a successful entrepreneur, business consultant, and founder of the innovation hub TrendHunter.com, Gutsche offers practical tools and frameworks for innovation, change management, adaptation, and disruption strategy.
The book is filled with engaging examples and case studies that help readers not only understand these concepts but also apply them in their own lives and work. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, business leader, or simply someone who wants to stay ahead of the curve, “Better and Faster” is a must-read.
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.
Divergence
Divergence is creating products and services that go against the mainstream, including personalization, customization, status, and luxury.
Popular ≠ Cool: Don’t follow what’s already popular; instead, search for the next big thing that is cool.
- Identify the Mainstream to Diverge from It: People want products that reflect their unique personalities, so diverging from the mainstream can be a competitive advantage.
- Be Irresistible to a Specific Group: Create a cult-like following by invoking deep passion in a specific group, even if it offends others.
- Weakness Can Be Strength: Red Bull’s success shows that not everything needs to be perfect, and a disadvantage can be remarketed as an advantage.
Cyclicality
Cyclicality offers predictable recurring opportunities such as retro, nostalgia, seasonality, generational patterns, and economic cycles.
- Expect repetition and look for clues that lead to opportunities to adapt to cyclical patterns.
- Act quickly since cyclical opportunities are fleeting.
- Anticipate the certainty of evolution and prepare for what’s next to have an advantage.
- Look beyond immediate observations to see major forces that create cascading effects and smaller opportunities that gradually present themselves during an economic cycle.
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
Convergence is creating a winning business or product by combining multiple products, services, or trends.
Create a successful business by combining multiple products, services, and trends. Mixing, product and social integration, adding value through layering, drama, multifunctions, and co-branding are all examples of this.
- Adversity can create opportunities by freeing us from our usual path and awakening our inner creativity.
- Aligning with multiple trends can increase your reach and capture more customers.
- Innovative ideas can borrow from proven past ideas.
- Outlaw and avant-garde culture can inspire great ideas.
- Combining two ideas can create something new and unexpected. Look for concepts that can be woven together.
