Make Strategy Real
Plan
Turn ideas into focused actions.
While most startups in digital health were racing to build smarter symptom checkers, one startup noticed something else: caregivers were overwhelmed, invisible, and untrained. They launched an App with a caregiver dashboard that translated clinical instructions into plain language, tracked meds for multiple people, and sent check-in nudges based on daily routines.
Steps
What do you offer that no one else does? Whether you're solving a social issue or serving customers, focus on what’s rare, meaningful, and hard to copy. Don’t try to be “the best”—be the only one doing that thing.
Choose how you'll stand apart in your field:
Context Shift: Frame your current product, service or program against a different category or set of competitors. Instead of comparing it to similar options in the same category, shift your offer into another category where its strengths stand out as unique advantages.
Unexpected Value: Discover what people unexpectedly love about your product, service or program and build on that. What are you doing that is both unexpected and working? This creates emotional appeal and helps your work stand out in a sea of sameness.
Contrarian Value: Break a rule your industry or field follows blindly, rejecting a core assumption. Instead of valuing X, value Y. This creates sharp differentiation and gives you space others can’t copy easily.
Use this four-part structure to write your strategy:
Argument: Explain what’s going on in your field. What’s the current reality? Why does something need to change? What do you see differently from others? And what’s your idea to solve it?
Statement: “Our strategy is to use [X], to create [Y], in order to [Z].”
Implications: List the key things that need to happen to make your strategy real. Break it down by areas like product, brand, distribution, sales, etc. What needs to change?
Execution Flow: List the actions in the order they should happen. What comes first? What can wait? What’s critical now?
Based on the ideas of Alex M. H. Smith (2023).