Non-Linear Thinking Wins in Non-Linear Times

The world is no longer changing one industry at a time.
AI, automation, and data are rewriting many industries simultaneously.
The biggest breakthroughs now come from people who think across boundaries.

Iterate On brings together leaders from unrelated and adjacent industries—not to talk theory, but to exchange hard-won lessons, failures, and playbooks.

Because the future won’t be built in silos.

Why Cross-Industry Thinking Actually Works

Tighten this into a clean framework:

Breakthroughs happen when mental models collide.

Fresh perspectives
Outsiders question assumptions insiders stop seeing.
Analogous solutions
A solution proven in one domain often solves a different problem faster elsewhere.
Adjacent possibilities
Innovations in neighboring industries unlock next-step evolution.
Hybrid thinking
The most powerful ideas blend disciplines—technology, design, operations, and human behavior.

Orthogonal thinkers, like Steve Jobs, see what others miss because they aren’t constrained by a single playbook. Jobs used his experience from Pixar to reshape telecom.

Proof: Outsiders Change Industries

A few examples:

Ford borrowed the assembly line from meatpacking and cut car production from 12 hours to 90 minutes.
Apple fused computing, calligraphy, entertainment, and telecom—reshaping multiple industries and displacing incumbents like Nokia and BlackBerry.
Tesla imported software iteration into manufacturing, redefining vehicles as updatable platforms.
Uber emerged when smartphones, GPS, and app marketplaces converged—rewiring urban transportation.
SpaceX applied lean manufacturing and rapid iteration to rockets, cutting launch costs by ~94%.
Starlink used automotive-style mass production to deploy more satellites than most nations. They own more than half of all satellites in space, today.

Pattern:

The winners didn’t just invent new products.
They imported ideas from elsewhere—and scaled them faster.

Orthogonal Thinking Is Driving AI’s Biggest Leaps

Amazon applied data feedback loops across retail, cloud, media, and hardware—becoming one of the world’s first deeply interconnected AI-native ecosystems. They fused retail with cloud technologies, with logistics, with media, and more.
Airbnb borrowed trust mechanics from eBay to build a global hospitality network without owning property.
Netflix used predictive analytics from finance to personalize content at massive scale.
DeepSeek applied hedge-fund efficiency thinking to AI training—proving software strategy can rival GPU brute force.
AlphaFold adapted game-playing AI techniques to biology, unlocking protein folding.
Midjourney & Stable Diffusion sed open-source principles to decentralize generative AI.

AI progress isn’t linear.
It accelerates when ideas jump domains.

Why This Matters Now

We are entering a period of synchronized disruption.

AI isn’t transforming one sector at a time—it’s reshaping:

Transportation
Healthcare
Finance
Agriculture
Retail
Manufacturing
Knowledge work

At the same time.

That means:

Yesterday’s best practices expire faster.
Risks propagate across industries.
Advantage goes to teams who learn outside their category.

IterateOn exists to shorten that learning curve.

"Ways the World Could Change"

(Additional future shifts to include to expand the page beyond what’s already there.)

1. The Unbundling of the Corporation

AI agents will fracture traditional org charts.

Small teams will outperform large departments.
Roles become fluid, project-based, and agent-augmented.
Decision-making compresses from weeks to hours.

Cross-industry insight matters because org design is no longer industry-specific.

2. The Rise of AI-Native Regulation and Liability

Regulation will shift from static rules to adaptive, model-aware oversight.
Legal exposure will hinge on how AI systems are trained, deployed, and governed.
Industries will borrow governance models from finance, aviation, and healthcare.

This is a massive cross-pollination moment.

3. Data Becomes the New Physical Infrastructure

Private data eclipses public data in value.
Companies begin treating datasets like factories or supply chains.
Entire new markets emerge around data refinement, licensing, and portability.

Industries that learn from logistics, energy, and manufacturing will win here.

4. AI Collapses the Distance Between Insight and Action

Analytics, decision-making, and execution merge.
“Knowing” and “doing” become one loop.
The fastest organizations will feel alive—continuously sensing and responding.

This mirrors high-frequency trading models entering every industry.

5. Trust Becomes the Ultimate Differentiator

As AI content floods the world:

Verified identity
Proven provenance
Human-in-the-loop systems

…become competitive advantages.

Healthcare, finance, media, and education will cross-borrow heavily here.

Iterate On is not a conference.

It’s a curated room of people who are:

Building in uncertainty.
Learning faster than their industries.
Willing to share what worked—and what failed.

We believe the next breakthroughs won’t come from better answers.
They’ll come from better questions—asked by people who think differently.

That’s why we bring the room together.