The Value of Universal Ambition
In the heart of Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia stands a testament to human ambition: Michelangelo’s David. At seventeen feet tall, its physical presence commands attention. David’s creation commands attention as well.
The block of marble from which it emerged had a challenging history. Known locally as “the giant,” the marble had been partially carved and then rejected by two previous sculptors. The block’s massive size made it unwieldy, and its narrow proportions seemed to limit what could be achieved. After being abandoned, it had lain exposed to the elements, further deteriorating its condition. By 1501, when Michelangelo took on the David commission, most considered the block too damaged and awkwardly shaped to yield anything of value.
Yet where others perceived insurmountable constraints, Michelangelo saw possibility. The result of his vision, skill, and effort would later prompt Giorgio Vasari, the great chronicler of Renaissance art, to write: “After Michelangelo had finished it, it can well be said that this work has eclipsed the fame of all modern and ancient works, Greek and Latin alike.” This historic achievement and comparison is meaningful in more ways than one.
Michelangelo’s universal ambition
Around 1538, several decades after completing David, Michelangelo engaged in a series of conversations about art in Rome with his close friend Vittoria Colonna. The conversations were documented by Portuguese artist Francisco de Holanda as a series of dialogues in his treatise “On Antique Painting,” which while not factual records of Michelangelo’s views are nevertheless considered deeply insightful by many historians. One theme is Michelangelo’s view on how a great artist should measure themselves and their works.
“[The true] painter,” Michelangelo is recorded as declaring, “will not only be instructed in the liberal arts and other sciences such as architecture and sculpture, which are properly his occupations, but if he has a mind to, he will undertake all the other manual trades that are practiced throughout the entire world, with far greater skill than the proper masters of them.” At first glance, this might seem like hyperbole, an artist boasting of universal mastery. But as art historian Alessandra Russo demonstrates her 2020 article “Lights on the Antipodes: Francisco de Holanda and an Art History of the Universal,” Michelangelo was almost certainly expressing something far more profound about the nature of excellence and creative achievement.
Russo explains that Michelangelo was articulating a new way of thinking about artistic excellence. When he spoke of “all the manual trades practiced throughout the entire world,” he wasn’t simply referring to the known artistic traditions of Europe or even the classical world. Instead, he was acknowledging the possibility of excellence in any form of human creativity, anywhere in the world, at any time, and articulating the idea that true excellence required competing not just with one’s immediate peers or even acknowledged masters, but with all human creative achievement.
This becomes even clearer when we examine another of Michelangelo’s recorded statements from the dialogues: “Thus he who carefully considers and understands the works of humankind will find without doubt that they are either painting itself or some part of painting.” As Russo explains, Michelangelo was breaking down the traditional hierarchies between “high” arts like painting and sculpture and other forms of human creativity. Excellence in any form of making — whether a classical sculpture, an African textile, or an Incan golden vessel — represented a benchmark against which true artists needed to measure themselves.
This universal standard transforms how excellence can be conceived and pursued. It wasn’t enough to be better than one’s peers or to match the achievements of acknowledged masters. Instead, one had to consider the entire scope of human creative achievement: past and present, known and unknown, across all forms of endeavor.
This perspective helps enrich our understanding of Michelangelo’s notorious competitiveness, as well as the transcendent quality of works like David. When Michelangelo approached that abandoned block of marble, he may have been driven by an ambition that exceeded the conventional artistic standards of his time. He may have been competing with every form of human excellence he could conceive of, and the results speak for themselves. David is a monument to human achievement.
Universal ambition in strategy
The same tension between narrow and universal standards of excellence plays out today in strategy. Most companies measure themselves exclusively against industry peers or immediate competitors, just as Renaissance artists might have compared themselves only to their contemporaries. But as Michelangelo’s example suggests, this constrained frame of reference limits what we can achieve.
Longstanding McKinsey research reveals why this matters. When we examine the global distribution of economic profit — that is, profit after accounting for the full cost of capital — we find a striking and strikingly consistent power law dynamic. The top 20% of the world’s largest few thousand publicly traded companies capture nearly 90% of all economic profit created. This Power Curve of economic profit bears an unsettling underlying message: competing successfully within your industry is no guarantee of creating genuine value.
Economic profit matters precisely because it captures true value creation more accurately than traditional metrics. While standard accounting measures like revenue growth or operating margin can make a company look successful, they often mask the reality of whether a company is actually creating or destroying value when all costs are properly considered. A company can grow revenue, increase operating profits, and still destroy value if it isn’t earning more than its cost of capital.
Perhaps more troublingly, the conventional practice of measuring performance primarily against industry peers can create a dangerous form of strategic myopia. When consumer packaged goods companies only compare themselves to other consumer packaged goods companies, or when telecoms benchmark solely against other telecoms, they risk optimizing for a local maximum rather than true excellence. This industry-centric view can make modest improvements look like major achievements, while masking opportunities for transformative value creation.
Consider how this limited frame of reference might have constrained Michelangelo if he had applied it. Had he measured himself only against contemporary sculptors, the abandoned marble block might well have remained abandoned — after all, other skilled sculptors had already deemed it unusable. Had he considered only the techniques and standards of classical sculpture, he might never have achieved the unprecedented psychological depth and dramatic tension that makes David so powerful and timeless.
The value of adopting a universal perspective in strategy, as in art, lies in its power to elevate ambition. When companies measure themselves not just against industry peers but against all value creators across the economy, they begin to see their own potential differently. This broader view reveals not just how much value is possible to create, but how rare and precious genuine value creation really is.
This reframing has practical implications. Instead of asking “How can we be the best in our industry?” companies should ask “What would it take to join the ranks of the world’s greatest value creators?” Instead of benchmarking against industry average profitability, they should measure themselves against the threshold for entering the top quintile of all companies. This shift in perspective doesn’t just raise the bar — it fundamentally changes how strategic opportunities are evaluated and what constitutes a meaningful move.
The science behind moving the needle
If universal ambition represents the art of strategy, what about the science? Here too, McKinsey research offers valuable insights. After analyzing thousands of companies over years, specific thresholds were identified that separate transformative strategic moves from incremental improvements, defining what is required to compete for value at the highest level.
Consider M&A. Many companies engage in occasional, opportunistic deals. But the research showed that only programmatic M&A — executing deals annually that did not exceed 30% of your market cap, but over a decade cumulatively amount to more than 30% of market cap — meaningfully improves a company’s odds of moving up the Power Curve. Similarly, while many companies adjust their resource allocation year to year, only those that reallocate at least 50% of their capital spending among business units over a decade achieve significant performance improvements.
This pattern repeats across other strategic moves. Whether it’s capital expenditure (requiring investment at 1.7 times the industry median), productivity improvements (reaching the top 30% of your industry), or differentiation initiatives (achieving gross margins in the top 30%), the research revealed clear thresholds that separate truly transformative actions from business as usual. Making moves that clear these thresholds dramatically improves a company’s odds of moving up the Power Curve.
While I prefer not to refer to recent examples of strategic moves and outcomes, as time is the only true measure of success, Tae Kim’s new book “The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant,” is worth highlighting for examples of threshold-clearing strategy. Kim describes how Nvidia made a bold strategic bet when it decided to make every chip CUDA-compatible, even though they “had very few customers for CUDA” when it was first introduced in 2007, according to CEO Jensen Huang. The substantial cost of doing this was reflected in Nvidia’s gross margins falling from 45.6% in fiscal year 2008 to 35.4% in fiscal year 2010. As Huang acknowledged, “CUDA added a ton of cost into our chips.” Nvidia’s commitment to this bet was all the more impressive considering the impact of the Great Recession in 2007–8, which caused many companies to pull back on their own strategic investments.
Nvidia’s strategic bet positioned them for the AI revolution that would follow. When AI’s potential became clear, they were able to seize the early opportunity by rapidly reallocating more resources, going from “only a handful of people working on AI-related projects” to making AI work the company’s “highest priority.” By 2024, these threshold-clearing strategic moves, and the courage and foresight they required, had helped transform Nvidia into the world’s most valuable chip company.
The power of such moves is twofold. First, they create more value when successful: research shows that companies making multiple such moves are six times more likely to rise to the top quintile of economic profit than those making none. But perhaps more importantly, they help break through organizational inertia. Just as Michelangelo had to overcome both the physical limitations of the marble block and the psychological constraints of what others thought possible, companies must overcome both operational constraints and organizational resistance to change.
Practical tips for unlocking more value from strategy
Creating transformative value requires more than just ambition: it demands specific practices that enable organizations to break free from industry constraints and achieve universal excellence. Four essential practices stand out: expanding your frame of reference beyond industry boundaries, building mechanisms to force a step back, creating processes that force consideration of transformative moves, and developing organizational capacity for executing big moves.
First, carefully manage your frame of reference. Nvidia’s Huang notably resists extensive discussion of the company’s past. While he often frames this as wanting to avoid reliving painful mistakes — “We survived ourselves. We were our own worst enemy.” — it also may reflect an belief that historical anchors can limit future potential. This same forward-looking discipline extends to how organizations should benchmark performance. Rather than limiting comparisons to industry peers, organisations should measure themselves against the world’s top value creators across all sectors. The goal is to avoid the gravitational pull of industry conventions and historical precedents that can limit strategic ambition.
Second, build mechanisms to force a step back. The most successful organizations create structured moments for deep reflection and questioning of assumptions. Nvidia has institutionalized several such practices. Their whiteboarding culture requires executives to start every strategic discussion from scratch, preventing recycled thinking. The company’s “Top 5” email system requires every employee to regularly step back and crystallize their most important observations and priorities. And whenever employees return from trade shows, gaming events, or trips to Taiwan, Jensen’s first question is always “So, what did you learn?” — a simple but powerful mechanism for forcing synthesis and preventing missed signals. These practices create the space needed to spot emerging opportunities and challenge conventional thinking.
Third, create processes that force consideration of transformative moves. Organizations need structured ways to evaluate whether potential moves will clear the thresholds that separate incremental from transformative change. This means regularly questioning whether strategies are anchored to industry conventions or universal standards of ambition. It requires explicit consideration of how moves might position the organization for opportunities beyond its current market. Nvidia exemplified this in its decision to invest heavily in AI capabilities, making a bet that went far beyond conventional graphics processing.
Finally, organizations must develop and sustain the cultural capacity for conceiving and executing big moves. Kim’s book documents many “Jensen-isms” that exemplify this at NVIDIA:
- “Is it world class?”: Nvidia’s products, talent acquisition, and business practices must be benchmarked against the best.
- “Nvidia can execute”: Nvidia wins with superior technology and execution.
- “Pilot-in-Command”: Jensen’s designated leader for an important project who should receive priority support from the entire company.
- “Second place is the first loser”: The goal and expectation is to win every time.
- “Speed of Light”: Strive to improve performance to the absolute limit of what’s possible according to the laws of physics rather than comparing results against previous ones.
- “We don’t steal market share, we create markets”: Nvidia wants to be the market leader in a new area rather than fight over an existing business.
- “You got to believe, what you got to believe”: If you believe in something, go invest in it. Go do it. Put all your energy there.
The key is that these practices must work together as a system. Nvidia’s success to date wasn’t just about spotting the AI opportunity; it has been about having the frame of reference to see its true potential, the mechanisms to step back and think deeply about its implications, the processes to make a decisive strategic bet, and the cultural capacity to sustain that bet over years despite short-term pressures. When all four elements work together, organizations can achieve historic things with strategy.
New year, new ambitions
Michelangelo’s approach to artistic excellence offers a powerful model for strategic leadership. When he looked at that abandoned block of marble, he saw past its perceived limitations and contemporary standards. Instead, he measured himself against what he is said to have called “all the works of humankind” — a universal standard that demanded reimagining what was possible. The parallel between true artists and true strategists is noteworthy.
This universal ambition matters because genuine value creation is remarkably rare. The stark reality that just 20% of companies capture 90% of all economic profit tells us that competing successfully within industry boundaries is not enough. True value creation demands breaking free from industry constraints and conventional thinking. It requires conceiving and committing to moves big enough to transform outcomes, not just incrementally improve them.
As we enter 2025, every strategy executive should ask: What would your strategy look like if you were competing not just with your industry, but with all companies? What if your benchmark wasn’t just the present, but encompassed all time? What if, like Michelangelo with his giant marble block, you saw past apparent constraints to reimagine what’s possible? What would it mean to embody David’s courage and poise when confronting a Goliath-sized ambition?
Make 2025 the year to raise your organization’s ambitions for strategy. The Power Curve of economic profit shows us what true value creation looks like, as well as how clear the bar is. The examples of Michelangelo’s David and companies like Nvidia show us that when we measure ourselves against universal standards of excellence, we can create historic value.
This was originally posted on January 1, 2025 in my LinkedIn newsletter The Strategy Executive’s Craft: The Art and Science of Strategy Leadership.
