History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Today, as throughout history, upstarts innovate while incumbents barely move. Upstarts disrupt the status quo; incumbents protect it. Everything is ripe for innovation, and AI gives us the chance to start with a blank page; only innovators think this way.
Most AI implemented inside established organizations optimizes the current model rather than challenging it. That’s understandable. Marginal gains are real. 10% faster, cheaper, and more productive. Those improvements add up. But marginal gains have a ceiling.
Most organizations bolt AI onto existing workflows and call it a day. It doesn’t work that way. They don’t even stop and consider if those existing processes should exist at all with AI. They’re using AI to preserve the past. Don’t do that. It’s better to start with a blank page and rethink your processes and workflows from first principles, with AI as an enhancer.
What would happen if, instead of asking how AI could make something 10% better, you asked what it would take to make it 10x better?
The question changes the way you think. And, by the way, AI won’t do it for you. You have to direct it. Anyway, everyone loves increments because they’re safe and somewhat easy to predict. But guess what?
10% Better Optimizes. 10x Better Reinvents.
10x thinking forces you to question assumptions that 10% thinking lets you keep.
If the goal is 10% faster customer support, you improve the current support process. If the goal is 10x better, you start asking why customers need to contact support in the first place.
If the goal is 10% faster loan approvals, you automate parts of underwriting. If the goal is approving qualified customers in seconds, the existing workflow itself becomes the constraint.
If the goal is making meetings 10% more productive, you add an AI notetaker. If the goal is eliminating 80% of meetings, you rethink why information needs to travel through meetings at all.
- 10% better asks: How can we improve this process?
- 10x better asks: Why does this process exist at all?
- 10% better asks: How can we automate this task?
- 10x better asks: Why are we doing this task in the first place?
10% better accepts the existing architecture. 10x better forces you to question it.
That’s where the blank page becomes powerful. For a moment, forget how your organization works today. Forget the existing workflows, roles, approvals, handoffs, meetings, systems, and assumptions. Start from zero.
If you were creating this company today, with today’s AI capabilities available from day one, would you design it the same way?
Would customers interact with you the same way? Would employees work the same way? Would information move through the organization the same way? Would you have the same processes, departments, meetings, and layers of approval? Probably not.
So don’t begin with AI. Start with the outcome you want, then work backward. Then see where and how AI can help you 10x toward that outcome. Because the biggest opportunity with AI isn’t making the old model slightly better. It’s giving ourselves permission to imagine a completely different one.
Bottom line: 10x thinking starts with a blank page. 10x thinking creates a new, better, and different system. 10% optimizes the existing one.
