Innovation is ultimately a practice of elimination.

I love working with experts and founders who have taken their intersections of deep experience to blend them into a unique body of work.

But sometimes, we start with a “feature monster!” (aka. something that tries to do everything).

Then begins the process of elimination...

Just for fun, here are some of my favorite feature-monsters-turned-proprietary systems over the years:

Fashion Designer, Songwriter Singer, Painter =  
➡️ Founder of Eclectic Order™ (renaissance artist curator for dead spaces in malls)

Ex-Corporate Leader, Executive Trainer, Life Purpose Coach =
➡️ Founder of Suited Monk™ (global conscious leadership training programs)

Martial Artist, Fitness Trainer, Philosopher =
➡️ Founder of Weightlessness™ (mind-body peak performance system for those who don’t need gurus)

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When you want to create something more original,sometimes you need to give yourself less to work with.
(Less functionality, language, features, audiences, promises…)

Creativity may happen when we expand possibilities, but innovation happens when we ask:What is actually essential here?

Design thinking moves between these two modes:

First, diverge: explore, sense, imagine, generate.

Then, converge: choose, clarify, simplify, remove.

IDEO describes this as moving between CREATING choices and MAKING choices.

In fact, BOTH are critical in the shaping of an idea.

But that second half is where I think a lot of founders get stuck. Because we’re surprisingly biased toward addition.

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Research published in Nature found that when people are asked to improve something, they’re much more likely to think about what they can add than what they can remove.

This also happens in professional services, not just with products.

Programs get another feature. Offers more bonuses. The methodology gets another pillar. The website gets another message. The business gets another audience.

Until the original signal is buried underneath everything designed to strengthen it!

This is why reduction is such an important part of the work I do with experts and founders.

We might start with:

10 insights → 1 core insight
8 audiences → 1 primary client
12 ideas → 1 organizing principle
6 offers → 1 compelling proposition
30 years of expertise → 1 coherent system

The goal isn't to make the thinking simplistic.

It's to make the complexity clear.

Saint-Exupéry captured the deeper principle beautifully: perfection arrives not through endless addition, but when there is nothing meaningful left to remove.

That may be one of the most useful tests for proprietary work: Can you keep taking things away until what remains could only be yours?

That’s when the concept often gets simpler (not flatter) and your body of work is clear (without removing its depth and complexity).