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Find the Industry Assumptions Capping Your Growth, Rank Them and Test One Before Anyone Else Does
Walk a trade show in a mature industry and try to tell the booths apart. Same products, same price points, same distributors, same claims. Nobody decided to be identical; everyone just followed rules nobody wrote down. Some are true, some were true twenty years ago, and some were never true at all. That last group is where growth hides.
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By Todd Hagopian, who has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works and Whirlpool.
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Who it's for
Leaders of a business in a mature industry where products, prices and channels look like the competition's, growth is flat and new ideas get dismissed with "our industry is different." Find the unwritten rules with four methods, rank them by impact and evidence strength, pick one that's high-value, weakly supported and testable, and test it in a bounded pilot.
Not for you if a company that can't run any test, however small, or for safety and legal requirements, which are genuine constraints. It covers market rules, not your own internal approvals and meetings.
What you'll learn
- Agreement Isn't Evidence
- Find Them
- Rank Them
- Test Before You Bet
- Scale It and Protect It
Plus a final action plan and a worksheet you can use the same week.
Key takeaways
- Agreement isn't evidence. An orthodoxy can persist because everyone believes it, not because anyone proved it.
- Four ways to find rules nobody can see, including the outsider exercise, a history audit and why chains.
- Score each rule on impact and evidence strength, and agree the dollar tiers with finance before you score.
- Test before you bet: a bounded pilot with a comparison group, measured net, against a disproof criterion written in advance.
- Scale in steps, protect the people who did it and go after the next rule.
From the book
Walk a trade show in a mature industry and try to tell the booths apart.
Same products in the same sizes. Same price points, a few dollars apart. Same distributors, same catalog layout, same claims about quality and service. Every company has studied the same customers and reached the same conclusions.
Nobody decided to be identical. Each company just followed the rules everyone knows: what customers want, what they'll pay, how the product has to be sold. Nobody wrote those rules down. Nobody tested most of them recently. They're simply how the industry works.
Some of them are true. Some were true twenty years ago. And some were never true at all. They just never got tested, because nobody thought to question them.
Todd Hagopian, The Rules Worth Breaking, from the prologue "Everyone Sells It the Same Way"
Frequently asked questions
If everyone in the industry believes it, isn't it probably true?
Sometimes. But agreement isn't evidence. An orthodoxy can persist because everyone believes it, not because anyone proved it. If every company offers the same thing, customers buy the same thing, and the sales data then "proves" that's what they want.
How do I find rules nobody can see?
Use four methods. One is the outsider exercise: bring three to five people from unrelated industries into a three-hour session, brief them on the basics only, ask them to question everything you treat as normal, record every question and ban "you don't understand our industry."
It worked. Now what?
Scale it, protect the people who did it and look for the next rule. Scale in steps, checking the net measure as you go. The pilot was a sample, not a promise.
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Obsolete or Load-Bearing?
Cut the approvals and meetings that no longer protect anything, and keep the ones that do.
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Are You Underpricing?
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Read moreRelated reading on the blog
- What Is an Industry Orthodoxy? Definition + 12 Examples
- Which Orthodoxies Are Worth Attacking?
- The 7-Step Orthodoxy Smashing Process
Go further
Stagnation Assassin: The Anti-Consultant Manifesto is about the bigger fight: the conditions that make companies decay from the inside, the team you need to fight them and the tools to keep a recovered business moving. It's available now. Todd's next book, 10-Minute Transformation, is out February 23, 2027.
The full library
Two ways to get it. Preorder now and it ships on release. Or buy on launch day, February 23, 2027, and get three free audiobooks (10-Minute Transformation, Stagnation Assassin and The Unfair Advantage) plus the full minibook library, on the honor system. Preorders don't include the launch-day bonuses.
About the author
Todd Hagopian, The Stagnation Assassin, is VP of Product Strategy and Marketing. He has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works, and Whirlpool Corporation, with $3B+ shareholder value across five turnarounds. He speaks to leadership teams on business transformation, turnarounds, and breaking stagnation.