Dara Ladjevardian explains why companies need a "Big S" strategy that looks beyond solving immediate problems. A real strategy incorporates long-term cultural, social, competitive, and technological trends to envision where products and user experiences are headed.
There's this interesting quote by Elon Musk which is life has to be about more than just solving problems. And he, he says it in the context of the aspiration to become a multi planetary species. But I think this is true of every sort of company like big or small. There needs to be an aspirational and cool component to strategy. And I call this sort of biggest strategy. You start with the company, you know, mission and vision. And there is a little bit of groundwork that is done on long term cultural trends. So social trends, competitive trends, technological trends and those are all the backdrop to trigger ideas. You again do these sort of like leadership interviews but with a different goal of generating like long term futures. What does a day in the life of a user look like in sort of five years? What does the product look like in sort of 5 to 10 years? Why is the world better in like 10 years and what is the most exciting version of that view?