The Little Red Riding Hood Challenge

From Little Red Riding Hood to Amazon Web Services, the stories we inherit shape how we see risk and opportunity. This article explores how cultural conditioning and organisational habits keep us clinging to the core — the safe, well-worn path — even when innovation strategy and growth beyond the core demand we step into the unknown. Featuring insights from

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Strategic Parasitism: How Customers Hijack Your Strategy

[TL;DR: Just as parasites manipulate host behaviours for their benefit, our internal microbiota subtly influence our dietary choices and behaviours to enhance their survival. Similarly, organizations risk strategic stagnation when overly influenced by dominant customers, neglecting disruptive innovations essential for long-term health and adaptability. This Thursday Thought emerges from the surprising connections from eclectic insights — from

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Echoes of a Forgotten Self: On Past Lives, Infantile Amnesia, and Organisational Origins

“No company starts out as a cumbrous bureaucracy, but most end up that way. As an organization grows, layers get added, staff groups swell, rules proliferate, and compliance costs mount. Once a company hits a certain threshold of complexity — around two to three hundred employees — bureaucracy starts growing faster than the organization itself.” — Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini,

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Healthy Terrain, Healthy Business: The Red Queen Hypothesis

“Competition and cooperation are not contraries. They have no opposite meaning. They are complimentary. In every aspect of life, we do both. Schools are highly cooperative endeavours within which scholars vigorously compete. The Olympic Games combine immense cooperation in structure and rules with intense competition in events. As the runners leap from the blocks, competition

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Target Fixation: Intel’s Strategic Focus and the Trap of Success

“Past success can breed complacency and constrain future innovation.” — Robert Alexander Burgelman Imagine you’re a fighter pilot in a chaotic dogfight, adrenaline surging as you zero in on an enemy plane. Your vision tunnels on that target, and you start to lose awareness of everything else. Pilots call this target fixation — becoming so focused on one object

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The Map Is Not the Territory: The Real Shape of Strategy

“The Map is not the Territory” — Alfred Korzybski For generations, the German village of Mödlareuth lived as one. A narrow brook — the Tannbach — trickled through its centre, technically dividing Bavaria from Thuringia. But for the people who called it home, it was simply a stream. They crossed it daily to attend school, share meals, marry neighbours, and bury their

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