犯罪分子和创业公司的创始人都会“质疑权威，在体制外行动，发现新的巧妙的做法。”古德曼说，“他们要么成为伊隆·马斯克（Elon Musk），要么成为古兹曼·洛埃拉（El Chapo）。”
而一些创业者为了颠覆市场甚至敢于涉足法律的灰色地带。以在线音乐服务公司Napster为例，公司的联合创始人在首次提供在线文件共享服务时明知故犯，侵犯音乐版权，但也正是因为他们的技术，监管者为此对相关法律进行了创新。
古德曼等人相信把注意力更多的放在解决问题上，而不是担心条条框框的限制，能够防止成熟的企业不被那些较少受传统思维拘束的竞争对手超越。
阿莱克萨·克莱（Alexa Clay）和凯拉·玛雅·菲利普斯（Kyra Maya Phillips）在《The Misfit Economy》一书中探讨了在公司架构中，个人如何应用这种思维模式，提高创新能力和富有创业精神。
他们的研究对象不仅包括索马里海盗那样的暴力犯罪分子，也包括为了寻找创造性的商业解决方案而打破规则的人，比如生活在孟买贫民窟的一些人，或计算机黑客。他们归纳出这个群体的五个特征：抓紧时间，灵活，挑战，入侵和模仿。（the ability to hustle, pivot, provoke, hack and copycat.）
克莱所举的最重要的一个例子是沙特阿拉伯的企业家瓦利德·阿卜杜勒-瓦哈卜（Walid Abdul-Wahab）。阿卜杜勒-瓦哈卜与阿米什族（Amish）的农民合作，未经美国监管者批准就在美国销售骆驼奶。通过不懈的努力，他最终建立了阿米什的骆驼农场网络，并开始通过社交媒体销售产品。他的公司现在名为“沙漠牧场”（Desert Farms），为自然食品超市——“Whole Foods Market”这样的大型零售商供货。
处于社会边缘的人常常没有机会成为公司白领，为了谋生，他们不得不发挥更多的想象力和创造力，克莱说。他们必须咬紧牙关，坚韧不拔，这样才能在恶劣的条件下生存下去。“在很多情况下，稀缺恰恰是创造发明之母。”克莱说道。
（责编：友义）
要做人上人
以下五点有助于你获得权力：
- 抓紧时间：坚韧不拔，戒骄戒躁
- 入侵：发现并利用系统的漏洞
- 模仿：在现有的点子和想法上更上层楼，即便这些点子想法已经有版权了
- 灵活：遇到挑战时快速改变策略
- 挑战：质疑现有的信仰和教条
Life lessons from villains, crooks and gangsters
A notorious Mexican drug baron’s audacious escape from prison in July doesn’t, at first, appear to have much to teach corporate boards.
But some in the business world suggest otherwise.
Beyond the morally reprehensible side of criminals' work, some business gurus say organised crime syndicates, computer hackers, pirates and others operating outside the law could teach legitimate corporations a thing or two about how to hustle and respond to rapid change.
Far from encouraging illegality, these gurus argue that – in the same way big corporations sometimes emulate start-ups – business leaders could learn from the underworld about flexibility, innovation and the ability to pivot quickly.
“There is a nimbleness to criminal organisations that legacy corporations [with large, complex layers of management] don’t have,” said Marc Goodman, head of the Future Crimes Institute and global cyber-crime advisor. While traditional businesses focus on rules they have to follow, criminals look to circumvent them. “For criminals, the sky is the limit and that creates the opportunity to think much, much bigger.”
Joaquin Guzman, the head of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, for instance, slipped out of his prison cell through a tiny hole in his shower that led to a mile-long tunnel fitted with lights and ventilation. Making a break for it required creative thinking, long-term planning and perseverance – essential skills similar to those needed to achieve success in big business.
While Devin Liddell, who heads brand strategy for Seattle-based design consultancy, Teague, condemns the violence and other illegal activities he became curious as to how criminal groups endure.
Some cartels stay in business despite multiple efforts by law enforcement on both sides of the US border and millions of dollars from international agencies to shut them down. Liddell genuinely believes there’s a lesson in longevity here.
One strategy he underlined was how the bad guys respond to change. In order to bypass the border between Mexico and the US, for example, the Sinaloa cartel went to great lengths. It built a vast underground tunnel, hired family members as border agents and even used a catapult to circumvent a high-tech fence.
By contrast, many legitimate businesses fail because they hesitate to adapt quickly to changing market winds. One high-profile example is movie and game rental company Blockbuster, which didn’t keep up with the market and lost business to mail order video rentals and streaming technologies. The brand has all but faded from view.
Liddell argues the difference between the two groups is that criminal organisations often have improvisation encoded into their daily behaviour, while larger companies think of innovation as a set process.
“This is a leadership challenge,” said Liddell. “How well companies innovate and organise is a reflection of leadership.”
Left-field thinking
Cash-strapped start-ups also use unorthodox strategies to problem solve and build their businesses up from scratch. This creativity and innovation is often borne out of necessity, such as tight budgets.
Both criminals and start-up founders “question authority, act outside the system and see new and clever ways of doing things,” said Goodman. “Either they become Elon Musk or El Chapo.”
And, some entrepreneurs aren’t even afraid to operate in legal grey areas in their effort to disrupt the marketplace. The co-founders of music streaming service Napster, for example, knowingly broke music copyright rules with their first online file sharing service, but their technology paved the way for legal innovation as regulators caught up.
Goodman and others believe thinking hard about problem solving before worrying about restrictions could prevent established companies falling victim to rivals less constrained by tradition.
In their book The Misfit Economy, Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips examine how individuals can apply that mindset to become more innovative and entrepreneurial within corporate structures.
They studied not just violent criminals like Somali pirates, but others who break the rules in order to find creative solutions to their business Eating together, such as people living in the slums of Mumbai or computer hackers. They picked out five common traits among this group: the ability to hustle, pivot, provoke, hack and copycat.
Clay gives a Saudi entrepreneur named Walid Abdul-Wahab as a prime example. Abdul-Wahab worked with Amish farmers to bring camel milk to American consumers even before US regulators approved it. Through perseverance, he eventually found a network of Amish camel milk farmers and started selling the product via social media. Now his company, Desert Farms, sells to giant mainstream retailers like Whole Foods Market.
Those on the fringe don’t always have the option of traditional, corporate jobs and that forces them to think more creatively about how to make a living, Clay said. They must develop grit and resilience in order to last outside the cushy confines of cubicle life. “In many cases scarcity is the mother of invention,” Clay said.
Staying top dog
These 5 traits could keep you in power
Hustle: Grit, helps avoid complacency
Hack: Identify and exploit weakness in the system
Copy: Build on existing ideas, even if they've been copyrighted
Pivot: Shift gears quickly when faced with a challenge
Provoke: Question existing beliefs and dogmas
Source: The Misfit Economy, by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips
