There’s been perhaps no greater disruptive force to come on the scene in the past 20 years than Bart Simpson. And in a business environment where disruptive strategy might be the only thing you can do to gain a near term advantage, couldn’t we all learn a thing or two if Bart were the Chief Strategy Officer at our company.
So as a result, let’s kick Bart upstairs and see how disrupting life in Springfield can be applied to disrupting competitors and markets. Try to generate at least 3 new competitive strategy possibilities from each approach Bart employs:
- Having an “in your face” attitude
- Not being restricted by respect for authority
- Displaying a very sharp wit
- Showing some signs of good behavior and character
- Using a healthy dose of street smarts
- Making friends with less popular people
- Devising elaborate and complex pranks
- Continually getting into something
- Playing jokes on people over the phone
- Mooning people
- Displaying some unexpected talents
- Becoming easily distracted from the task at hand
- Using an alias to hide his part in creating mayhem
- Reveling in his mischief and rebellion
One caution: using Bart Simpson in the Change Your Character creative thinking exercise will lead to ideas that could be illegal, immoral, or create such bad PR that you’d never pursue them. Yet, those possibilities may have the seeds of really great strategy. Use the Shrimp exercise discussed in a previous post to turn outlandish Simpsonesque ideas into more practical ones.
Check out a compilation of "Change Your Character" creative thinking exercises and information on its use. – Mike Brown
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