By Dean Waye & Alan Gonsenhauser
In today’s polished, performance-optimized business world, leadership is still defined by sameness. Executives are trained to iron out flaws, follow best practices, and emulate textbook competence. The goal is to look “well-rounded.” Safe. Predictable.
But sameness is not a strength. It’s a slow death.
In a world full of data-driven clones, your rough edges might be the only thing that sets you apart.
Because real brand genius doesn’t usually emerge from a strategic planning session It’s born out of necessity. It comes from the personal, messy, lived experiences of founders who had to rewire the world to match how their minds work.
This is the “Bug to Feature” effect: when a personal workaround, developed to survive a system not built for you, becomes the foundation of a billion-dollar brand.
The Myth of the Polished Leader
Traditional business culture sees neurodivergence as a liability. Something to manage, accommodate, or “overcome.” But that’s a fundamental misread.
ADHD, dyslexia, autism — these aren’t just diagnoses. They’re often sources of strategic power.
They enable different ways of seeing patterns, solving problems, and making connections others miss.
Where convergent thinking helps execute, divergent thinking creates.
The stories that follow aren’t about abstract traits. They’re about specific, real-world advantages. Each one is rooted in a personal workaround that became a strategic edge.
IKEA: Dyslexia as Design System
Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA’s founder, struggled with dyslexia. Remembering product SKUs and model numbers was nearly impossible.
Most would’ve tried to force-fit a coping system. Kamprad didn’t.
Instead, he changed the system itself, replacing product numbers with Swedish names and places.
Chairs got men’s names. Curtains got women’s. Outdoor furniture was named after islands.
What began as a workaround became a brand signature. IKEA’s naming system is now iconic. More importantly, it created emotional stickiness. People remember their BILLY bookcase. They share stories. They feel like insiders.
This is what true differentiation looks like: not just functional, but folkloric. Born from a brain that couldn’t do things the “normal” way.
More Bugs That Became Moats
This pattern isn’t rare if you know where to look.
• Barbara Corcoran (Dyslexia): As a struggling student, she learned to “fill in the blanks” with imagination. That discomfort with the conventional became her real estate superpower: bold positioning, storytelling, and a fearless relationship with failure.
• Richard Branson (Dyslexia + ADHD): Couldn’t keep up with the details, so he mastered delegation. Couldn’t process dense text, so he learned to simplify and see the big picture. His neurodivergence forced him to build a business that scaled without micromanagement.
• Charles Schwab (Dyslexia): Says his success came from “visualizing” strategy, not calculating it. Dyslexia gave him a cognitive model for long-term foresight — not spreadsheets, but mental simulation.
These founders weren’t great in spite of their differences. They were great because of them.
The Differentiator AI Can’t Copy
Here’s the key insight: these advantages can’t be replicated by competitors — or by AI.
You can copy IKEA’s naming system, but it’ll feel fake if it didn’t come from your founder’s brain.
You can train an AI to optimize your brand, but you can’t train it to have dyslexia or to need a workaround that rewires the rules.
These human bugs create something machines can’t:
• Emotionally resonant brands
• Authentic differentiation
• Economic moats born from story, not scale
And they don’t just boost marketing. They lower CAC, build loyalty, and create price elasticity. They give you cultural gravity.
IKEA didn’t just create quirky names. It built a tribe and offloaded labor to customers in a way they liked.
How to Build Around Divergence
But this isn’t a story about famous outliers. It’s a playbook for any leader who wants a brand that can’t be commoditized.
- Protect Your Originals
Don’t sand down the edges. Stop punishing obsession, deep focus, or “strange” ways of thinking.
Build space for written thought, long-form reasoning, and uncomfortable opinions. Hire people who don’t fit your culture deck.
- Budget for Non-Linearity
Give people time and room to tinker without demanding an immediate ROI.
Genius doesn’t emerge from efficiency. It emerges from freedom.
(As Rory Sutherland puts it, “The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.”)
- Look for the Bug
Every team has someone compensating for something. A person who built their own tool. Who created a workaround no one noticed.
That’s where your next differentiator lives — in plain sight disguised as a flaw.
The Real Job of Leadership
Your job isn’t to fix people.
It’s to spot the weird workaround someone built in the shadows and turn it into your company’s flagship feature.
Because in the age of AI, process isn’t scarce. Creativity is.
Companies used to pay to achieve peer-level sameness and you couldn’t even give away originality. Now unlimited sameness is free and originality is dear.
The only kind of brand that will matter tomorrow is the kind that couldn’t have been built by anyone else.
Not even you unless you had the bug.