Strategic Thinking for Founders
They did not ask how to win. They asked what to stop competing on.
The business case
A Circus With No Animals — Cirque du Soleil · Canada · founded 1984. By the 1980s the traditional circus industry was in long decline. Audiences were shrinking, animal welfare concerns were rising, and star performers commanded high fees.
Why it matters
They did not ask how to win. They asked what to stop competing on. Strategy is usually taught as choosing how to beat rivals. The more useful question for a small venture is which competition to decline entirely. Cirque's advantage came as much from what it removed as from what it added — and removal reduced costs at the same time as it increased differentiation, which conventional strategy says should not happen together. For a founder with limited resources, subtraction is usually the more available move.
What you will be able to do afterwards
- First principles thinking and when to use it
- Blue Ocean strategy: competing by not competing
- Analysing competitors without imitating them
32 screens, audio-narrated, with a quiz at the end.