The One Core Competency Rule

When companies are born, they usually have some spark — a market insight, a new technology, a product, a service. And tucked inside that spark is something they do better than anyone else. That “better than anyone else” is what people love to call a core competency.

Now, “core competency” sounds fancy, but really it’s just the special something a company can do that separates it from the pack. More than a competitive advantage, it’s the anchor you build the business on. If you were building a house, your core competency would be the concrete foundation — invisible once the walls go up, but holding everything steady.

The trouble is, the phrase “core competency” gets tossed around like confetti at a corporate holiday party. It’s supposed to mean, “this is what we’re truly great at.” Instead, too often it becomes corporate filler for “don’t worry, we do that too.” And the moment it turns into a shrug, the meaning is gone.

Here’s the thing about foundations: once the house is built, you don’t rip them out and replace them. Not unless you want the whole place to collapse. That’s why when you build a company, you need to recognize one important truth.

The 1 Core Competency Rule

Every successful company — big or small — started with a single core idea or capability. As companies grow, culture, products, features, and shiny opportunities pile on, and people forget what made the business special in the first place. The 1 Core Competency Rule says:

Remember, you have one true core competency. That doesn’t mean you’re only good at one thing. It means if you lose sight of the central capability that made you great, you’ll get distracted and drift away from what you do best.

Why it matters

At some point, every company faces a fork in the road. Do we grow in this direction? Do we buy from this vendor? Do we tack on this shiny new feature because the market seems to be buzzing about it? Do we acquire a company to expand ourselves? This is where the 1 Core Competency Rule does its best work. It sharpens decisions. It forces harder, more honest questions. And ironically, that makes decision-making simpler.

Think of it as a compass you keep in your pocket. It doesn’t mean you stop exploring or refuse to adapt — but it does mean you know where north is. Without it, you can wander into a dozen new opportunities that look exciting on the surface but quietly erode your foundation.

Personally, it’s saved me more than a few headaches when it comes to partnerships. Beneath all the glossy decks, slick demos, and buzzwords every vendor trots out, there’s always just one thing they’re really great at. Spotting that one thing tells me whether the relationship makes sense. The same applies internally: when you think about launching a new product, ask yourself — are we chasing the market because we’re afraid of missing out, or are we leveraging the one capability that already gives us an edge? The rule isn’t a straitjacket. It’s a shortcut to focus.

The rule in action

I lean on this constantly when selling. Picture this: a prospect is grilling me on how our product stacks up against a laundry list of competitors. The temptation is to start rattling off every overlapping feature, trying to prove we check as many boxes as the next guy. But that game never ends well — because someone always has more boxes.

Instead, I bring them back to the 1 Core Competency Rule. I tell them, “Every startup, every vendor, has one true core competency. Judge them on that.” That line usually makes people pause. They lean back, tilt their head, and say, “Okay, what do you mean by that?” And that’s my opening.

In that moment, the conversation pivots. We stop playing the feature checklist game and start talking about what each company actually does best. And when the spotlight shifts there, I can show why our offering — built on our one core competency — is the smarter, sturdier choice. It’s a faster path to clarity, a cleaner comparison, and often, the moment that tips the scales toward a deal.

A real example: GraphIQ — My Company

Our company, GraphIQ, is a knowledge graph company. That’s the official line, but here’s what it really means: at our core, we reconcile entities — like companies — and by scanning and analyzing the entire public web we’re able to aggregate and store facts about them in a way that no one else does. That reconciliation, that foundation, is our one true competency. Everything else we do is built on it.

In a sense, we take any string of words to transform them into discrete entities that are accurately defined so that it can be appended to expand the available information of that entity over time.

The result isn’t a static database. It’s a living, breathing business knowledge engine — where information is intertwined and connected in ways that allow our customers to traverse, curate, collect, organize, and ultimately summarize the data they care about.

It is like a new digital library, because if AI = Models + Data, our knowledge graph is the data to bring trust to the business questions people need answers to.

Notice what I didn’t say: we’re not a lead generation company, we’re not a newswire, and we’re not just another business search tool. Those might sound adjacent, but they’re not our core. What we’ve built is an interconnected information source, one that makes it possible to ask — and actually answer — complex questions across industries, markets, and time.

And because we’ve never lost sight of that single competency, our roadmap is clear. In five years, I’ll describe us exactly the same way. Sure, we’ll have modules and applications built on top of the graph — ways to surface the value, make it tangible, make it useful — but the heartbeat of the company will remain unchanged: the relentless expansion of the knowledge graph itself. That clarity is our moat. Others can (and will) confuse what we do. We can’t.

A more personal example: InnovationMuse — My Consulting Persona

The second example is more personal. During the pandemic, I decided to hang out my own consulting shingle — InnovationMuse. It wasn’t just a side project; it was me naming what had always been true about how I work. For years I had been an innovation advocate inside companies, and eventually I realized my calling wasn’t in someone else’s brand but in my own.

The name says it all: I like innovating, and I like being a muse for others. CEOs don’t just need strategy; they need someone who can help them live it. My work has been helping leaders find their true north, articulate a vision, and then build the concrete moves to get there. That’s the core competency I’ve honed — not a product, not a platform, but the ability to sit at that intersection of imagination and execution and help someone bridge the two.

Others become CEOs of companies or products. I decided to become CEO of my skill set. And honestly? That’s been my smartest business move.

If you’ve read these posts, you’re already inside my process. I’ve been in the lab for years, testing conceptual models about how innovation works — where culture and operations meet to unlock new levels of performance. It’s a strange lens, sure, but it’s mine. And like GraphIQ’s foundation, it won’t change. It’s my personal core competency, the thing that I’ll keep coming back to no matter what.

So — one question to leave you with: what is your one true core competency? If you can’t answer that in ten seconds flat, chances are you’re juggling too many “specials” and diluting what really matters. The truth is, not everything you’re good at deserves equal billing. Some of it is nice-to-have wallpaper; some of it is the load-bearing wall that keeps the whole house standing. Pick the one capability that actually moves the needle — the thing that, if you stripped everything else away, would still hold your business (or your career) together. Then, build relentlessly around it. Everything else should either support it, extend it, or get out of the way.