YOU CAN'T STOP THE WAVES, BUT YOU CAN LEARN TO SURF

Last week, Dominic Thiem won the US Open Tennis Grand Slam. He has been an incredible player, reached 3 grand slam finals before finally hitting the gold this time. Nothing to take away from his incredible achievement but this time he was helped by the absence of usual champions- Federer, Nadal and the freak omission of Djokovic during the tournament.

In business, the term “tailwinds” describes a situation or condition that will move growth/revenues/profits higher and “headwinds” are the opposite of the tailwinds.

Thiem's case was certainly that of riding the tailwinds with the key players missing. It does take a different level of situational awareness to sniff the tailwinds and the opportunity it brings in & then demonstrate the will to ride with them.

Recently, Nvidia acquired ARM for $40 billion. In 2016, both had market cap of ~ $30bn. Now Nvidia is at $300bn & ARM acquired for $40bn! Nvidia rode the tailwinds of rise of ML, self-driving cars, gaming where GPUs became a critical piece. Both Nvidia and ARM had same opportunity but Nvidia showed skill to ride the wave.

Call it situational awareness or sniffing an opportunity, these stories probably unleash hidden lesson for us professionals.

What are your takeaways ? 

Sketchnote:

My LinkedIn post:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6712182578817966080/