How do you take down a competitor who seems unbeatable? Who can do no wrong and who has dominated the landscape for decades?
I found myself asking this question as I took an entrepreneurship course to cap off this year. The most valuable take-away was that Plan B is much better than Plan A. Plan B is not a contingency, but a progression. Creating a better Plan B demands that you ask how you can take the failed Plan A and apply whatever merit it had to a new situation.
It might be tough to imagine Plan B being better than Plan A. To imagine how it is, we turn to the world of Superman.
Thousands of before Superman was born on the planet Krypton, there lived there a mad scientist. He was obsessed, as mad scientists often are, with creating the ultimate weapon. The scientist created a child who he would throw into Krypton’s unforgiving wilderness to be killed. He would then harvest the cells of the corpse and clone a new entity, which was immune to whatever had previously killed it. Surviving longer and longer, this creature grew up to become immensely strong. Before it exacted revenge on its creator, he was named Doomsday.
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| He wasn't built to look good. |
Fast-forward a few thousand years and Doomsday was fighting Superman. Doomsday hit Superman harder than anyone or anything ever had. Keep in mind, Superman has gone toe-to-toe with gods before and lived to talk about it. Something else to consider is that Doomsday didn’t go after Superman’s well-known weakness of kryptonite. He just hit him really hard, a lot. Superman took down Doomsday, at the cost of his own life. Sorry if you were rooting for him.
Imagine Superman as Microsoft and Doomsday as Apple when they were starting out. How do you take down a competitor who seems unbeatable? You test every assumption and every plan until you become great, and then you keep going. You test each assumption in small enough steps that you’re certain your new product will be better. If you exhaust your idea, you find a new way to apply it.
It took the guys behind Pay Pal six iterations from Plan A to create what eventually became Pay Pal. It took that scientist hundreds of iterations to build the ultimate weapon. It took Apple 30 years to become dominant and they still haven’t decisively won.
So go on and plan, iterate, and grow. Someday, you can kill Superman too.
Editor’s Note: I am a huge fan of Superman and would very much not like for him to be killed again. If you have a topic idea, I'd love to hear from you! Suggestions can be made in the comments section or on Twitter @JeremyDeMello.
