The other day I was at Boundbreaker meeting about EuroCloud.

Not exactly on topic, however very interestingly, Kristjan Pečanac mentioned that the key to global success isn’t programming, marketing or UX anymore. The key today is leverage.

I asked him, what he meant by it. He said: “Do you remember the case of Microsoft who used IBM as their leverage in their early days?” I knew the case. The case was about Microsoft bluffing IBM into licensing MS DOS, a piece of by then non-existing operating system.

I got what he meant. It also got me thinking. What other cases of business leverage do I remember? Let me try. For example, World War II was a universal leverage to the following at least: Coca Cola, Nescafe, Jeep. Pixar used Disney as its leverage. Ray Croc was the human leverage to McDonalds, likewise Howard Schulz is to Starbucks. Rauch has been the leverage for Red Bull. The current economic crisis is the leverage for VMware virtualization. Priceless campaign has been the leverage for MasterCard. Janica Kostelić has been the leverage to Jana water.

What are the leverages of today? Silicon valley to tech, Hollywood to stardom, Milan to fashion, TED conference to worldwide recognition, likewise the Davos World Forum, The Economist to corporate life, soccer to sponsorship in Europe, the Superbowl in USA and cricket in the Commonwealth.

By writing this down I see it’s tough. Identifying the leverage is not just looking at one element like distribution, but is a much wider search. The leverage can come from anywhere, be it an event, a person, a system, a strategy, even luck. Hm, this will make me wonder some more.