Strong opinions weakly held is often just an excuse to be contrarian. Real value comes from spiky opinions: strong convictions rooted in personal experience and deep expertise, not lightly held provocations. What do you know that others don't?
Have spiky opinions. There's a saying that you should have strong opinions, weakly held. I'm not really sure that I agree with that. I think that's just an excuse to be a contrarian, to throw grenades into conversations. But I do think that there are certain things that you know and understand are very different from what everyone else knows and understands. In finance, they might call that calling bullshit. And in other places, it might just be that this is the thing that you believe that other people don't believe. And those things are going to be the most valuable. They are driven by your experience. By your knowledge, by your clarity of thought, greater than those of the others. That they are strong opinions, not so much weakly held, but held on the basis of your observations, based on confidence in your experience and in your expertise. Those are going to be the ideas that can drive a remarkable business and create remarkable value for your customers. What do you know? What do you think that others don't? What opinions are spiked?
