“You have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy,” Steve Jobs said. “The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay.”

In 2026, there is no shortage of ideas. We are surrounded by analysis, predictions, technology, data, warnings, and opportunities. What is scarce is the ability to recognise which ideas are directionally valuable: those that point to a change in cost, capability, risk, regulation, behaviour, or opportunity that warrants a different decision.

This is not a call to reward novelty, particularly at a time of economic contraction. Not every idea deserve time, capital, or organisational attention. But some signal that the world outside has changed while the organisation’s assumptions, budgets, and decisions remain attached to an earlier set of conditions.

An idea may begin as a hunch: a customer observation, an unusual pattern in data, a frontline workaround, a new capability that makes an old cost unnecessary, or a sense that preserving the existing model is becoming more expensive than anyone has acknowledged.

An idea becomes useful when it gives us something to calculate. Is the shift real, material, and likely to hold? What is the old model now costing? What would it take to respond? What becomes possible if we do - and more dangerous if we do not?

When the calculation points to a different decision, the idea has become strategic. I call the moment when the cost of the status quo becomes greater than the cost of adapting the Crossover Point.

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