While re-reading a portion of "Competing for the Future" by Hamel & Prahalad, I ran across this sentence: "A company surrenders tomorrow's businesses when it gets better without getting different".

This has been on of the fundamental themes of my working life: keeping a firm grip on improving what we know how to do, while still being open and adventurous enough to do things completely different in and for the future. 

Whether we think about it on a daily basis or not, getting different is the ultimate goal we strive to achieve for clients. Going beyond helping them to be better to helping them become different.

This process moves focus from fighting for market share to inventing new markets. It is the exact opposite of positioning products and services for niche markets. It's all about changing the rules and moving momentum from "what is" to "what could be".

According to Hamel & Prahalad, to create the future, companies have 3 choices:

1. change in some fundamental way the rules of engagement in a long-standing industry
2. redraw the boundaries between industries
3. create entirely new industries. The capacity to invent new industries and reinvent old ones is the key to getting to the future first as well as the precondition for staying out front.

This isn't a game only for newcomers; incumbents can participate as well. While newcomers can change industry rules, only incumbents can regenerate core strategies to accommodate the relentless pace of change in their industries as well as reinvent their industries altogether.

Design has a huge role to play in this transformation process.

Some really cool news about this is on the way soon...