Svyatoslav Biryulin
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Strategy Without Customer Needs Is Fantasy
Most founders dream of building products that will “change the world.” But here’s the truth: a…
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Strategy Starts With the Right Question
Before you set targets, ask: “What will make the business truly stronger?” Strategy starts with the…
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Strategy Is About Causes, Not Effects
Too many leaders treat revenue as the goal. But strategy is about causes, not effects. Growth happens…
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Strategy Means Knowing When Not to Grow
Most CEOs panic when growth stalls. But strategy means knowing when not to grow. Steve Jobs spent…
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With a Good CEO, Business Grows Fast. With a Great CEO, It Grows For Years
Would you oust a CEO if the business hasn’t grown for six years in a row?…
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Strategy Starts Where the Customer Hurts
Most strategies fall flat because they ignore the one thing that matters: customer needs. Great strategies don’t…
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Strategic Failure Often Begins with a Dream
If your strategy starts with “winning aspirations,” you might already be off track. Too often, businesses…
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Rethinking Strategy: Vision Isn’t the Starting Point
Most companies still build their strategy around big dreams and bold visions.But here’s the problem: a vision isn’t…
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How Strategic Are You?
Take a quick test and find out Do you know how to not just think strategically…
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Fixing Your Growth Strategy DNA
Your Growth Strategy DNA isn’t just about ambition or goals. It’s about three things: – Knowing…
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There are no saturated markets — only uncreative executives
In 1999, a coffee chain opened its first store in a country where no one really…
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Decision-Making Strategy That Actually Drives Growth
A decision-making strategy that ignores customer value isn’t a strategy—it’s a shortcut to irrelevance. Amazon bet…
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Strategy Without Value Is Just a Wish
Strategy without value is just a wish list.You can identify the right needs—but if you don’t…
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Strategy Begins with Needs
Strategy begins with needs—not with brainstorming sessions or spreadsheets.Most companies start with ideas. Great ones start…
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Strategy as Jazz
Stop treating your company like a symphony orchestra. Real strategy doesn’t come from a fixed score.…
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The Strategy You’ll Need to Rewrite
If you think your strategy is “done,” think again. Great strategies are written in pencil, not…
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Strategic Principles > Strategic Plans
Most strategic plans are huge PowerPoint decks that nobody reads — except the people who wrote…
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They Lied to You. Strategy Is Not a Map. It’s a Short-Term Tool
Most leaders ask for a strategic roadmap — a 5-year plan with steps and milestones. But…
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The Most Dangerous Enemy of Your Strategy? Your Own Innovation.
5 Cognitive Biases in Business Strategy I Suffered From as a CEO — and How I…
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The First-Mover Illusion in Business Strategy
Paradoxes in business strategy can turn success into a strategic dead end. Being first doesn’t always…
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The Startup Trap: When Innovation Feeds Your Rivals
Strategic thinking mistakes often turn bold innovation into free R&D for competitors. A startup builds a…
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The Most Dangerous Enemy of Your Strategy? Your Own Innovation
Cognitive biases in business strategy can blind you to the real risks of growth. XYZ’s team…
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Why Great Products Can Still Fail
Flawed assumptions in business strategy can ruin even the most innovative products. Your product may be…
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🧠 When Your Mind Holds Back Your Strategy
We talk a lot about market shifts, competition, and disruptive tech. But what if the biggest…
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Why Your Strategy Ages Faster Than You Do
Most business leaders accept that the world is changing — but forget that they themselves are changing too.…
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You Will Change. Your Strategy Should Too: The End of History Illusion
5 Strategic Thinking Biases I Suffered From as a CEO — and How I Help Others…
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Disruption Is Overrated
Disruption and our predictive abilities are overstated. While we can’t forecast specific future events, we can…
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Good CEOs See the Distant Future. Great Ones Master the Near Term
CEOs burn tons of energy trying to predict the future — when what really matters is…
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Good CEOs See the Distant Future. Great Ones Master the Near Term
Two ideas and one simple tool for razor-sharp future thinking. Future thinking in strategy is overrated.…
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A vacuum cleaner, value exchange, and business profit
How Value Exchange Shapes Success in Business and Life What do you do every moment you…
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Not Knowing This Value Equation Almost Cost Me Everything as a CEO
A vacuum cleaner, value exchange, and business profit Many come to business, dreaming of gaining a…
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Notes of a Contrarian Strategist. Episode 40
Notes of a Contrarian Strategist. Episode 40 is live! Today’s topics: Most Traditional Business Metrics Tell…
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Not Knowing This Value Equation Almost Cost Me Everything as a CEO
A vacuum cleaner, value exchange, and business profit Many come to business, dreaming of gaining a…
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Fallacies in Strategic Goal Settings
The fifth audio chapter of my book Red and Yellow Strategies: Flip Your Strategic Thinking and…
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Stop Competing on Features – Start Winning With Feelings
How a Psychologist Can Outperform a Startup Founder Poor businesses view customers as walking wallets. Good…
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No-Strategy Approach: Embrace Layered Strategic Thinking Instead
Most experts present strategy as seductively simple, like three phases: 1. Figure out where you are…
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We Threw Out Our Bold Vision and Only Then Did Growth Begin
Business focuses on value exchange, emphasizing the importance of offering benefits to stakeholders over having a…
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We Threw Out Our Bold Vision — and Only Then Did Growth Begin
The 8 habits that set deep strategic thinkers apart. The antithesis of strategic thinking isn’t mindlessness…
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We Threw Out Our Bold Vision — and Only Then Did Growth Begin
The 8 habits that set deep strategic thinkers apart. Part 1: System thinking On September 13,…
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Swap your EV’s battery
Nio, an EV maker from China, has already established 3,200 battery swap stations in the country,…
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Four Questions to Boost Your Innovation
Would you like to charge your EV in under five minutes? Get a hot pizza in…
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Strategy That Works: 13 Commandments of Effective Strategic Thinking
Battle-tested ideas to cut through strategic confusion Great strategists are people who once saw the world…
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Notes of a Contrarian Strategist. Episode 39
Today’s topics: – When the CEO Ignores Strategy, So Does Everyone Else – What’s worse than…
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Four Questions to Boost Your Innovation
“The ideal device is no device at all, yet the function is performed.” Genrikh Altshuller, a…
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Four Questions to Boost Your Innovation
An Old Theory Powering Bold New Solutions Would you like to charge your EV in under…
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Space Rockets, Mushrooms, and Button Factories: Choose the Right Business Growth Model
You can choose from five growth models. 1. Button Factory 2. Conveyor of Button Factories 3.…
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Stop Competing on Features – Start Winning With Feelings
How a Psychologist Can Outperform a Startup Founder You can innovate on three levels: · The…
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The Sweet Spot of Fulfilment
How to Be Happy and Successful in Your Work Your fulfillment lies at the intersection of…
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How a Psychologist Can Outperform a Startup Founder
Steve Jobs knew that beauty, simplicity, and intuitive design create powerful emotions – and people are…
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Stop Competing on Features – Start Winning With Feelings
You can innovate on three levels: · The product level – by enhancing your products, ·…
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Stop Competing on Features – Start Winning With Feelings
Poor businesses view customers as walking wallets. Good ones see them as friends. Great ones seduce…
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Your P&L Statement Misleads You:
Learn to See the Core in Financial Reports Look at your P&L statement. If you’re in…
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Don’t Buy the Present by Paying With Your Future
Why big public companies rarely create new markets Where shareholders reign, customers suffer. The stock market…
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The Difference Between an Innovative Product and a Reindeer Sweater
You can’t outspend the big guys — but you can outsmart them. Marriage and innovation share…
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Notes of a Contrarian Strategist. Episode 38
Today’s topics: Hitting the Target, Missing the Point Worse than failing to reach a goal is…
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Three approaches to innovation
Have your parents ever given you a reindeer sweater for your birthday when you were secretly…
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The Difference Between an Innovative Product and a Reindeer Sweater
You can’t outspend the big guys — but you can outsmart them Marriage and innovation share…
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No-Strategy Approach: Embrace Layered Strategic Thinking Instead
Most experts present strategy as seductively simple, like three phases: 1. Figure out where you are…
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Stop Strategizing. Start Creating
In September 2001, the CEO of a major company announced a big decision. From a classical…
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13 commandments of strategic thinking
1. A strategy should help executives and middle managers make their daily decisions. If it doesn’t,…
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The Moving Walls Problem: Why Long-term Life Planning Fails
You’re both the architect and the bricks The more detailed the plan, the less it matches…
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Strategy That Works: 13 Commandments of Effective Strategic Thinking
One sunny summer Sunday in 2010, I sat in my kitchen, drinking scalding coffee and reading…
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Strategy That Works: 13 Commandments of Effective Strategic Thinking
Battle-tested ideas to cut through strategic confusion. Great strategists are people who once saw the world…
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High productivity is a self-licking ice cream cone
Entrepreneurs promise us that AI agents and co-pilots will boost our productivity. But this feels like…
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Good CEOs focus on disruptive innovation. Great CEOs win
Startup founders obsess over disruptive innovation. VCs look for startups that promise disruptive innovation. Yet, ironically,…
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My Seven Principles For a Happy Life
– It doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved – Life isn’t a journey but a single point…
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Notes of a Contrarian Strategist. Episode 37
Today’s topics: – What we aim for shapes what we lose. Some strategy theorists argue that…
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The critical 10%
In 2018, an Uber car in autonomous mode struck and killed a woman pushing her bicycle…
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Machines Don’t Belong Here — They Fail in Their Own Ways
Why most tech predictions will miss the mark I’m as old as personal computers. Engineers have…
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Machines Don’t Belong Here — They Fail in Their Own Ways
Why most tech predictions will miss the mark Here are two facts about AI agents, bots,…
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Stop Strategizing. Start Creating
In September 2001, the CEO of a major company announced a big decision. From a classical…
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5 Pitfalls of Data: Why You Should Bet on Intuition While Strategizing
Worse than building a strategy solely on data can only be crafting one while ignoring data.…
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Notes of a Contrarian Strategist. Episode 36 is live!
Today’s topics: Profit is yesterday’s result of the day-before-yesterday’s decisions Your numbers exceed the outlook? Hold…
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Strategic Flexibility ≠ Spinelessness: The Myth About ‘Agile Strategy’
“Flexible strategy” is like AI. Everyone’s heard of it, but few know what it means. The…
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Strategic Flexibility ≠ Spinelessness: The Myth About ‘Agile Strategy’
This post includes a free gift for you! n 2007, my company’s strategy was simple —…
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Good CEOs focus on disruptive innovation. Great CEOs win
The pitfall of disruptive innovation Startup founders obsess over disruptive innovation. VCs look for startups that…
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You shouldn’t adapt, you should learn
Today, the media never tire of reminding us that the world is complex and changing constantly.…
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Yahoo!, Focused Strategy, and Magical Thinking:
What We Can Learn from Yahoo’s Failure If you can’t shoot straight, the number of targets…
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Business As The Art of Breathing Underwater
In 1989, Sidney Yoshida, a business executive from Japan, claimed that: Yoshida didn’t prove his findings.…
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Strategy in Three Minutes. Episode 35
Today’s topics: Strategy isn’t a recipe, it’s a cookbook Less marketing – more customering The stock…
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Fake Marketing Leads to Real Failure – Part II
Stop measuring the unmeasurable I’m writing this in a big hotel in one of Europe’s capitals.…
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Fake Marketing Leads to Real Failure
Stop measuring the unmeasurable Business bloggers writing about ‘data-driven decisions’ like to quote Peter Drucker: “What…
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From Safe to Strategic: Breaking Free from Team Thinking Traps
You take your team on a strategic retreat. The team members are all highly engaged and…
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Planning – the art of thinking ahead or the illusion of control?
In France in the 1930s, there was no shortage of far-sighted politicians. They knew that Nazi…
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The Best Plan? No plan
Even the most data-driven plans, built on solid analysis and risk scenarios, rely on yesterday’s data,…
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We’re malfunctioning computers running outdated software
And that’s the good news. Our ‘computers’ – our bodies – are imperfect. They malfunction, get…
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Strategy in Three Minutes. Episode 34 is live!
Today’s topics: – OUTvestment instead of INvestment – AI agents won’t change a thing – Are…
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The Best Plan? No plan
I defy the axiom that all strategic goals, plans, and projects must follow the same time…
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The Best Plan? No plan
Planning – the art of thinking ahead or the illusion of control? In France in the…
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The Journey Over the Goal. The Thinking Over the Journey
The human brain spends about 20% of its energy on cognitive functions, and mental simulations of…
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The Journey Over the Goal. The Thinking Over the Journey
Nanggol, or Land diving, is a ritual performed by the men of the southern part of…
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Strategy in Three Minutes. Episode 33 is live!
Today’s topics: 1. Strategy and Value Exchange: Why most AI startups will fail 2. Strategy-related terms:…
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The Journey Over the Goal. The Thinking Over the Journey
Nanggol, or Land diving, is a ritual performed by the men of the southern part of…
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The Journey Over the Goal. The Thinking Over the Journey
Corporate planning is a game where both sides cheat, both know it, and they try to…
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An Ideal Spherical Cow: Why Strategy Fails Outside the Vacuum
Many strategists argue that strategy means answering these four questions: It makes perfect sense, but it’s…
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An Ideal Spherical Cow: Why Strategy Fails Outside the Vacuum
Why five strategic questions are not enough Back in the ’90s, when I was studying math…
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Stop Putting Your Life on the Back Burner
An ambitious life goal can lead you to success—and wreck you on the way. Read more…
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Strategy in Three Minutes. Episode 32 is live!
Today’s topics: Why you most likely don’t need an AI strategy or The “Left Foot Strategy”…
