"Wherever I see people doing something the way it's always been done, the way it's 'supposed' to be done, following the same old trends, well, that's just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else"
About this Quote
Cuban frames conformity as a diagnostic tool: sameness isn’t neutral, it’s a signal of dead opportunity. The line works because it turns what most organizations treat as “best practice” into a warning label. “The way it’s supposed to be done” is doing a lot of work here: it names an invisible authority - industry norms, credentialed experts, internal committees - and implies that authority is often just consensus hardened into dogma.
The subtext is classic entrepreneur logic with a showman’s edge. Cuban isn’t only saying “innovate”; he’s saying markets reward the person who notices when a category has stopped thinking. When everyone is copying everyone else, differentiation becomes cheaper, and incumbents get lazy. His “red flag” language borrows from risk talk, flipping the script: the real risk isn’t novelty, it’s the comfort of the herd.
Context matters because Cuban’s brand has long been built on contrarian bets and a public impatience with corporate inertia - from early tech plays to Shark Tank swagger. He’s speaking to founders and operators who need permission to ignore the playbook, but also issuing a quiet challenge: if you can’t articulate why a process exists beyond “we’ve always done it,” you’re already losing to someone who can.
There’s a sharper implication tucked inside “go look somewhere else.” It’s not romantic rebellion; it’s allocation. Attention, capital, and talent should flow away from crowded, self-referential systems toward neglected problems - the places where “supposed to” hasn’t yet calcified into a ceiling.
The subtext is classic entrepreneur logic with a showman’s edge. Cuban isn’t only saying “innovate”; he’s saying markets reward the person who notices when a category has stopped thinking. When everyone is copying everyone else, differentiation becomes cheaper, and incumbents get lazy. His “red flag” language borrows from risk talk, flipping the script: the real risk isn’t novelty, it’s the comfort of the herd.
Context matters because Cuban’s brand has long been built on contrarian bets and a public impatience with corporate inertia - from early tech plays to Shark Tank swagger. He’s speaking to founders and operators who need permission to ignore the playbook, but also issuing a quiet challenge: if you can’t articulate why a process exists beyond “we’ve always done it,” you’re already losing to someone who can.
There’s a sharper implication tucked inside “go look somewhere else.” It’s not romantic rebellion; it’s allocation. Attention, capital, and talent should flow away from crowded, self-referential systems toward neglected problems - the places where “supposed to” hasn’t yet calcified into a ceiling.
Quote Details
| Topic | Entrepreneur |
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