Three essential ideas to increase your odds of success

Fun fact: Bloomberg keeps a “ wealth index” of the 100 richest people in the world. Ten of those individuals had no apparent headstart in life — they were born into poverty and didn’t have a college education. In my book Cumulative Advantage, I describe how all 10 of them took the same path to success. Indeed, it is a prescription for how we should all look at strategy and increasing our odds of success today.

What I discovered is that simply having a good idea is not enough to break through. Let’s explore this today and see what actions can increase your odds of success.

The seam

Let’s begin with an interesting new take on strategy.

In my book, I describe a “seam” as a fracture in the status quo. This could be any shift in demographics, politics, technology, taste, culture, or consumer habits that creates un-served or under-served customer needs.

Strategy today requires that we apply our ideas and talents to an immediate opportunity — a seam. Strategy isn’t about a 250-page report and a five-year plan like it was in the 1990s. It’s about bursting through that seam with full force in a clear moment of opportunity.

This is exactly what those 10 mega-billionaires did. Against all odds, they applied an idea they had to an…