There's No Monopoly On...

Shamefully, Google’s auto-suggest AI offered only two thoughts here.

‘There’s no monopoly on common sense’ is most irritating to hear. ‘There’s no monopoly on good ideas’, less so.

Especially in a business setting.

Even more bizarrely, look what happened when, a few minutes later, I re-typed:

Magically appearing anew; ‘Innovation’ and ‘Knowledge’. Four. How did the AI double its nous? And from where did the New Entry ‘innovation’ suddenly leap to the top of the charts?

I tapped this in myself because I caught some media talking head springboard from this when discussing the battle for video subscriptions. Specifically, how many suppliers might survive and how likely Apple were to challenge Netflix and Amazon Prime (and the imminent Disney-Fox entrant) as they announced their long-trailed arrival to the original content tv streaming space. It can’t come a moment too soon. Dinosaurs like the BBC need to feel the meteorite.

What he offered was, ‘there’s no monopoly on hits‘.

Hope for us all.

Which got me thinking. Positive uses of this phrase could be a selling tool to unlock possibly guarded prospect doors.

You could rotate it slightly. “Who around here has the monopoly on hits?”

I can imagine the beneficial levity introduced too.

Plenty of useful alternatives abound; Enthusiasm, Problem-solving, Solutions, Ambition, Success.

I noted one classic troublesome situation. The one where you have to ask to meet their boss. ‘Who makes the decision?’ you learn early always gets answered, “Me!”.

“Who else would typically be involved in discussion of this nature” was a line fed to me over twenty years ago from a big ticket Irish Management Consultant. Today, that feels a touch too formal. Time to reach for the monopoly dice.