A business can sell its strategic position by linking its Unique Selling Proposition(USP) to core values. In Shark Tank, the entrepreneurs are often asked about the story behind developing their products and services. ‘What is the background? What differentiates you? What is your Unique Selling Proposition(USP)?’ The objective of such questions is to dig into the origin story of founders to see how their stories have shaped and will shape the product or services. When a product or service is looped to the Origin Story, the more the likelihood of attracting investment and remaining a viable venture. That strategic positioning often determines the valuation of the company.

NVIDIA’s strategic positioning made it the world leader in Graph Processing Units(GPUs). In the early 1990s, it continued to strategically position itself by developing products despite rejection by major customers like HP, Dell, and IBM. According to these companies’ NVIDIA GPUs didn’t meet their specifications and price models. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO showed visionary leadership by ignoring customer concerns and rejection to continue developing the 3D Graphics. That strategic positioning is key to the company’s success in the Graphic Processing Units and 3D Graphics industry. NVIDIA had a unique perspective that customers could not envision at the time, but could get enough of when strategically placed to meet the customers’ needs. The result is that the company has reduced the marginal cost of computing by over one million times and grown customer-based. The culture of experimentation has led to innovation and cost leadership.

Innovation is good for businesses, but being innovative requires the status quo and can have huge cost implications in the short term. I just concluded a training program for startup entrepreneurs at the Helsinki Incubators, University of Helsinki on Design Pitching With an Origin Story Loop Strategy. The goal is to strategically position their startups to attract the right customers or investors

Here are some highlights

1. Identify and sell your core values. Start small, and focus on what works for you
2. Use the Review, Improve, and Repeat (RIR) Strategy for long-term strategic positioning. Communicating your strategic position sells.
3. Use storytelling to break down data analysis. All stories have structure. It improves.
4. Build experimental organization culture. Adopting a trial-and-error method is good for innovation.
5. Showcase your processes. Break down how you do things
6. Decentralize your company teams and decision-making process

“There is a spot where your competition cannot compete with you. Find that Strategic Position, that is your Origin Story Loop.”Osita Ifezue.

Benchmarking is beneficial when positioning yourself strategically in the short-term, but will not allow you to discover new information about your niche in the long-term. My first start-up Edumentory, an edtech that mirrored the Finnish education system and was implemented in other countries. We made the strategic choice to focus on developing programs that will build our niche selling for the first 1.5 years of operation. The experimentation process revealed new information that helped narrow down our niche. This strategic decision grew into a culture of experimentation that evolved into an organizational culture.

Startups that encourage a risk-taking culture are better placed strategically in the long term. The importance of building experimentation into organizational culture is seen in the success of Supercell. In the first 2 years of operations, SuperCell overtook Electronic Arts as the most profitable game design company. The fast rise has been credited to the way it strategically positioned itself in small cells or teams with decentralized decision-making processes. The result is flexibility to experiment and rapid development. Experimentation has grown into an organizational culture, which has contributed to it consistently making hit games, Battle Royale, Clash of Titan, etc. The company’s culture is to celebrate the failures of games not released and focus on the lessons learned rather than the failures: even popping champagne on such occasions.

Target your niche to appeal to your super customers.

When making strategic choices, knowing who your super customers are, and targeting their needs lead to long-term strategic positioning. Strategic positioning is a visionary approach to telling what you want to achieve; and your purpose of being a business, which results in defining your niche. Eddie Yoon, the author of Superconsumers: A Simple, Speedy, and Sustainable Path to Superior Growth highlighted the importance of understanding your niche and marketing your strategic choices to them. The result will be over time those customers will become your superconsumers. The insights from superconsumers can grow your business and attract new customers. Apple is a good example of a company that uses its niche to grow super customers. For example, Apple killed the iPod to develop the iPhone.The cannibalization of a profitable product to make way for a future product is good strategic positioning that was focused on growing customer niche. Business storytelling should present not only a sequence of facts but also the milestones that can appeal to your super customers. Building an organizational culture of Storytelling will spur emotions and calls for action. Turn insight and data into experiences to relate with.