Designing Your Ultimate Competitor Today: What Would They Look Like?

2020 sucked. Let’s just call that out. But the future is still bright and who’s to say that 2021 can’t be our best year yet?

To kick things off and flex our innovation muscles, in this week’s Innovation Hour, we created an alter ego of our perfect competitor. Let’s dedicate 2021 to not just competing with a better version of ourselves, but to also strive becoming it.

What’s Innovation Hour?

Sometimes, it can be easy to fall into a comfortable box at work – you focus on just your work and stay only inside your bubble (ex. HR, tech, research, client outreach, etc.). Obviously, focusing on your work is by no means a bad thing. But when you only think and communicate only on topics within your bubble 40 hours a week, 50 out of 52 weeks a year, it can really stifle a person’s curiosity and creativity.

So we started hosting Innovation Hour, a bi-weekly hour dedicated to our entire team exploring new topics, exercising our innovation muscles, and widening our perspectives. We’ve covered a wide scope of topics: a TED Talk on creative confidence, climate change, living wage, and more. Our Talent, Culture, and Performance Strategy was actually born during an Innovation Hour session!

As we’ve shared what Innovation Hour is with our friends and clients, we’ve been met with resounding excitement and interest. To help you host your own Innovation Hour with your teams, we’ll be sharing prompts and resources to help kick off discussions. We can’t wait to hear where your team’s creativity and passion takes you!

Innovation Hour: Scenario

It’s 2025 and you have a major competitor.

This is your ultimate competitor – anything you can do, they can do better. Let’s build a better version of yourself so that you have a goalpost to strive towards. Here are some questions to brainstorm around to build up an in-depth profile of your perfect foil.

• What is your perfect competitor really good at? What major challenges are they addressing?
• What is their branding and messaging? What do clients feel or experience when they think about this company?
• Who makes up their team? How big is their team? Are there any new and innovative roles included?
• Who are their clients? Why do their clients choose them over you?

Innovation Hour: Tools

We developed a session framework to help you get those creatives ideas percolating. We made it with Jamboard, a free online collaboration tool.

New to Jamboard? Here’s a great video to quickly make you a master.

Want to share this Innovation Hour with your team? Download our free high-resolution card with all of the session info on it!

Innovation Hour: Extra reading

Enjoying this week’s topic and want to dive in deeper? Here are some other articles we found interesting and were inspired by:

50 what-if questions to reimagine the future

8 new jobs people will have in 2025