Johnny (ever the collector and curator of interesting points of view) points at a post from Tim Kastelle that draws an interesting point from Anything You Want, the book on entrepreneurship by CDBaby founder Derek Sivers.
The book tells the story of how a voice coach that Sivers had when he was in a band would encourage him to sing a song fast, then slow, an octave higher, then an octave lower, and in doing so created new and unforeseen choices for the best way to sing each song. Sivers goes on to make the point that the same approach is useful when lookng at a business model or plan – working through scenarios of a plan that requires only $1,000, or is designed for ten times as many customers, or is based on wholly different assumptions.
It's a good reminder of the value of recontextualising. When presented with a challenge, the temptation is to focus on the limitations of our situation: "if only the budget was bigger, we could…". I prefer questions like: What if you had half the budget to work with? What if you had no budget at all? My hunch is that the answer to those questions are far more interesting.
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