Ride the wave of change before incumbents realize it’s there

In the mid-nineteen-nineties, telecom giants read every headline about deregulation, fiber-optic cables, and PC networking yet clung to old rules: “scale is king, protocols are proprietary, we control our own switches.” Meanwhile small startup Cisco quietly rode four simultaneous waves—the microprocessor revolution, the rise of corporate data networking, the shift to IP as a universal protocol, and the global Internet boom. Each wave opened new high ground, and Cisco seized it by building modular routers, open-architecture firmware, and a nimble sales model. Size didn’t matter—what mattered was timing, technical skill, and the ability to anticipate how these tectonic shifts would reshape the competitive landscape.

When your market is in flux, the familiar formulas for success can desert you overnight. You must learn to scan the horizon—technical breakouts, regulatory shifts, shifting buyer habits—and ask not just “What’s new?” but “Who wins if this trend accelerates?” Then you design small experiments to test your hypothesis: a pilot product feature, a new alliance, a pop-up campaign. These early runs let you surf the wave before incumbents scramble onto their boards—and often fall off as they try to reposition their massive hulls.

By systematically spotting shifts, mapping winners and losers, and committing small test budgets, you transform distant tremors into actionable footholds. This dynamic approach sharpens your edge in any era of change, whether technology, regulation, or consumer tastes is the tide.

You start by listing each new or accelerating shift in your sector, then map how each change redraws your industry’s economics—who gains and who loses—laying out a clear 2×2 view. You spot the quadrant where your strengths align with rivals’ weaknesses and distill that into a one-sentence guiding policy. Finally, you allocate a small pilot budget—maybe just five percent of your resources—to test a targeted response before anyone else makes the leap. Give it a try this quarter.