The (second) one on positioning
The Strategy Omnibus continued
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting keynotes for 25Q3-26Q1
The 2025/2026 lineup:
What to do when you don’t know what to do.
How to create a sustainable competitive advantage through superior adaptability. (Based on the new book by the same name.)
Succeed big, fail small.
How to use experimentation to drive efficiency and effectiveness of innovation at scale.
Toward a fourth kind of uncertainty.
What new science reveals about old ideas.
The next paradigm.
How to level up your marketing with Nobel Prize winning science.
If you want to book me for your event, corporate speaking slot, or workshop, merely send me an email. To make sure I am available, please do so at your earliest convenience; my availability is limited and the schedule tends to fill up fast. More information may be found here.
The TL;DR
Positioning is about deliberately choosing how and for whom to deliver value through distinct activities, but it may or may not involve uniqueness.
Many confuse positioning with differentiation, but although the two terms are related, they are not synonymous.
Differentiation refers to effective differences between offerings; these can be real or perceived, visible or invisible to customers.
Unseen differentiation (e.g., in production processes) can drive strategic advantage even if customers fail to recognize it.
For positioning to work in practice, it must be adaptive, not static. As markets evolve, so too must strategic positions to avoid strategic drift.
Personal updates before we go-go
For some reason, Substack decided to send last week’s newsletter without updating the TL;DR that begins each edition. Instead, there was a mere placeholder. I can only apologize. It will not happen again.
The weather has gone mental in my neck of the woods; we are hitting 30+ degrees consistently. And yes, I know that for some that is a cool autumn evening. But I was born in the land of snow with ice in my veins; anything above 24 and I am sweating like a, well, insert your own joke. We Swedes are made for cold, not heat.
The heatwave presents a particular issue this time around as Child #2 has not yet turned a year old. Infants are not particularly well-equipped to deal with high temperatures, and Swedish houses rarely have AC; it simply is not needed 99% of year. As a result, she does not sleep properly until around 10pm - which means that the usual evening work is more work than usual.
Elsewhere in the country, the weather is worse. My parents are currently staying in our cottage up north. During a thunderstorm that knocked out the entire village, they had 4.9mm rain in one (1!) minute. Reportedly, that is the most intense downfall ever measured in this part of the world.
On a somewhat related note, I had a friend in school (now more than 30 years ago; time does fly) who got fed up with how frequently people used death as a yardstick. “They always talk of near-death experiences. What about near-life experiences? You know, the best moments in life; the ones that you remember when you think that there will be no more.”
Well, yesterday morning, I did have one such near-life moment. I was lying on my back on our (outside) lounge couch, with my laughing soon-to-be-one year old in my hands. The sky was blue; Chicago (the band, not the musical) was playing in the background. Just such an absolutely perfect, perfect, PERFECT moment.
Kids, man. They get you right in the feels.
Lewis Capaldi’s style of music is not one I listen to on any kind of regular basis; I prefer heavier sounds such as those by Tool. However, it is impossible to deny that the man nonetheless is and always was a genuine rock star. What an entrance.
I may, repeat may, make a comeback as a columnist. Not making any promises as details are still being hammered out, but you deserve to hear it first.
Moving on.