Win the game by not competing
Courtney James, @TheEmailWriter on Twitter, posted an interesting tweet earlier that got my attention, as many of his tweets often do. It went something like this:
If you can’t beat them at their own game then pretend you’re not interested in playing it.
I was reminded of a class I took in High School on entrepreneurship where our assignment was to start a small business and turn a profit in two weeks or less. We had a $100 budget to invest in the business and $40 of that was to be spent on advertising. The team profiting the most during the two week period would be awarded a $500 cash prize.
People paired up, but because the class had an odd number and I was usually the guy no one picked for their team, I ended up working by myself.
My business? I divided a sheet of paper into twelve equal blocks, sold each block to the twelve other teams for $40 as ad space, had 250 copies printed up and hand delivered them to all the houses and businesses in my community.
My USP? Your competitors are advertising, and we learned last week that it’s smart business to advertise where your competitors are!
My profit? $435.
The teacher tried several ways to disqualify me, but the one I remember was: “But Paul, you didn’t spend your $40 on advertising like you were supposed to.” My reasoning was – yes, I did spend it on advertising, I just sold that advertising to the others in the competition.
Finally, but reluctantly, he admitted that I had won.
Yes, I ‘won’ the competition – by not competing. By not playing the game the others were playing.
It still didn’t help me get picked as a team member in future competitions, though.
By Paul Short on 12/05/2012
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