Seeing what others can't
Brad Baxter loved his two cats but cleaning after them, not so much. An engineer by training, he saw more than a tiresome chore, he saw a business opportunity. Before long he developed the self-cleaning Litter-Robot. Customers were enthusiastic and today his company Whisker employs 600 people, generating annual sales of $300 million. Brad Baxter’s story illustrates how seeing what other’s can’t can be a successful life strategy.
Lukas Furtenbach is an Austrian mountainpreneur. To summit Everest, it used to take six weeks. Not a problem for dedicated Alpinists who spend their life in the mountains. But Furtenbach realized that this wouldn’t work for the adventure seeking CEOs, bankers, consultants, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs he spend time with earlier in his career, for whom time is a scarce commodity. So he started to charge a generous fee for using sleep chambers that acclimatizes your body to high-altitude conditions before you set of for the Himalayas. By developing personalized hypoxia routines he eventually brought climbing time down to 21 days. Furtenbach continues to stay ahead of the curve, by experimenting with Xenon gas mixtures. In May 2025 he led a team of experienced British mountaineers up Everest, taking them to the summit in just six days.
In contrast to more conventional architects Zaha Hadid did not worry too much whether her ideas can actually be turned into buildings. She always experimented with concepts and ideas. Even when there was no project, she sketched and painted, trying and retrying forms without knowing where they would lead. “We sometimes did not know what the research would lead to,” she once said, “but we knew there would be something.” Those experiments eventually did turn into buildings. Remarkable monuments that broke architecture free from straight lines and right angles.
The key to fight Covid was mRNA. But 30 years earlier when Katalin Karikó started to work on this, her colleagues were dismissive. Her grants were rejected, her papers dismissed, and she was demoted and eventually fired. A strong character, she decided not to dwell on what others thought. Instead she asked herself: “What can I do?” Which was going back to the lab. She deliberately blocked out the naysayers—and keep working on an idea that would ultimately help save millions of lives.
Georg Kell used all four strategies. He saw what nobody else working in the United Nations spotted: that the organization has to work with companies to advance the UN’s social goals. He influenced Kofi Annan, CEOs, trade unions, NGOs and even die-hard opponents—pursuing one reluctant official until he finally emailed: “Georg, bring the champagne, we are in!” He experimented constantly, changing tactics whenever circumstances changed. And he created the governance structure that turned an idea into the UN Global Compact. Kell remained flexible. While keeping the destination fixed, he used a combination of strategies to get him there.
When Jean-Claude Van Damme arrived in Hollywood, he was just another nobody. So he experimented with almost any way he could think of to get noticed: sending letters to movie stars, following producers out of studios, leaving photographs on their cars, tracking celebrities with “star maps,” climbing the wall surounding Sylvester Stallone’s house, and even posing as an investor to secure meetings with directors. His breakthrough came, when producer Menahem Golan walked into the restaurant where Van Damme worked. Performed a roundhouse kick over his head got him a meeting and an offer to star in Bloodsport. His breakthrough! Most of these schemes failed. But he only needed one to work.
Arnold Schwarzenegger used different strategies at different stages of his career. But when he moved into politics, he was able to influence what others can’t. He deliberately ran in a recall election where could avoid party orthodoxy as there was no party nomination race. Instead he could use his Hollywood fame to stick out in a crowded field. No other politician would be able to announce his candidacy on The Tonight Show. And now other candidate was able to get advice and support from both his Kennedy and Republican networks. A previous campaign for Proposition 49 – the After School Education and Safety Program Act – made sure that he was not simply a star but also someone with proven political talent.
When Sarah Hamouda was pregnant in 2021, she sent her husband on a hunt for the perfect choclate in Dubai. Nothing quite fit her taste. So she decided to turn her kitchen into a laboratory, experimenting with ratios, textures and temperatures. “Every mistake was data,” she told us. “So many versions were created, I lost count.” Once she had a perfect product it was time for marketing. And once again she took an experimental approach, trying food festivals, homemade videos and a $500 geo-targeted social-media campaign. Eventually, an influencer posted a video that went viral and the craze we know as “Dubai chocolate” fully took off.