In last week’s post I paid tribute to the year’s best April Fools corporate pranks. So it seems only appropriate to follow up this week with another installment of humor-drenched strategic insight from the comedy show Nathan for You.

Once again April 1st was upon us, giving companies around the world the perfect occasion to express their playfulness.  And it seems this year the number of corporate pranksters is way up and coming from all over the world.  A very welcome trend indeed, as humor is a manifestation of creativity, the growth engine of future shaping companies.

In the final weeks before his resignation, Pope Benedict created an official twitter account.  And last month The Vatican was present at South by Southwest, the preeminent gathering of the high tech community where Twitter was famously launched ten years ago.  Just what is the link between these two seeming opposites: A two thousand year old institution and cutting-edge social media platforms?

There is nothing quite like humor to illustrate points you want to make.  In his show on Comedy Central, comedian Nathan Fielder seeks out entrepreneurs and gives them absurd sounding ideas to galvanize their businesses. It just happens that many of his schemes perfectly capture the 3 key principles of The Slingshot Framework. Here is one humorous example.

Most companies face a very uncomfortable strategic dilemma:  Stick to what you’re good at or jump into something completely new.  In this short video, I address how The Slingshot Framework enables you to bypass this trade-off and pursue 3 levels of ‘blue waters’ simultaneously: