The Originals Checklist
How Originality Shows Up.
Originality is often described as creativity or boldness.
It’s neither.
Originality is a design choice about how problems are framed, how systems are built and how behaviour is shaped over time.
Originality emerges not from ideas alone, but from how owners of originality think and create systems and spaces to allow better behaviour to take root and last.
The aim of this simple Originality Checklist is to broadly capture examples of this thinking and space creation to understand why some ventures reshape their category, and others don’t.
The Originals Checklist
1. Reframe the Real Problem
Originals don’t start with solutions. They start by questioning whether the problem has been correctly defined in the first place.
2. Design for Behaviour, not Performance
Originals prioritise participation, habit and experience over outcomes or optimisation, both within and outside the organisation.
3. Remove the Friction
Originals focus on the small, everyday barriers that quietly stop people from taking part.
4. Put People at the Centre of the System
Originals’ design for everyone affected, not just the end user, but also the wider ecosystem.
5. Make Learning Safe and Visible
Originals drive progress through play, experimentation and feedback, not fear.
6. Build Systems, not Products
Originals build value from how things connect and reinforce each other, not from isolated features.
7. Align Incentives with Long-Term Value
Originals ensure that behaviour that benefits the system is rewarded, not undermined.
8. Create Value that Grows.
Originals shape and navigate over the long term rather than chasing short-term wins.
9. Build Capability that’s Hard to Copy
Originals build an advantage that lives in the system, culture and relationships and not in the surface idea.
10. Be Deliberately Original
Originals deliberately choose where to be different and where not to be.
Why do all these points matter?
In a world shaped by imitation and optimisation, originality is one of the few ways to create real space. Not by being louder or faster, but by being more considered about what shapes behaviour.
The Originals Checklist isn’t about chasing difference for its own sake. It’s about building ventures that last because they’re designed for how people really live, learn, and move. And that, ultimately, is what originality is for.
COACH and Wheelers – Original or Imitators?
So, just how original were COACH and Wheelers?
Let’s start with COACH.
COACH begins with a quiet but powerful reframing: the problem with sport isn’t how to play the game, it’s how people experience playing it.
Rather than optimising performance, COACH designs for enjoyment first. Learning happens through play; confidence builds through participation, and skill follows naturally. The platform removes friction by democratising access to elite coaching, reducing pressure, and making progress visible without fear.
COACH places the human, particularly children, teachers, and peers, at the centre of its system. It blends sport, education, psychology and gamification into a learning ecosystem that rewards engagement rather than exclusion.
The originality isn’t in the technology alone. It’s in how the system is designed to foster growth in participation, wellbeing, and confidence over time. That’s what makes COACH hard to copy and capable of compounding its impact.
Wheelers starts from a different domain, but the same logic.
Instead of asking how to get more people cycling, Wheelers asks why cycling fails to fit into everyday urban life. The answer isn’t motivation, it’s friction. No showers. No safe storage. No way to arrive ready for the day.
Wheeler’s designs for behaviour by completing the journey, not just the ride. Its clubs remove the practical barriers that prevent people from cycling to work, while its digital platform connects movement, health, carbon tracking, and incentives into a single experience.
Humans sit at the centre of the system, cyclists, employers, asset owners and cities alike. Value is shared across the ecosystem: healthier people, stronger communities, revitalised real estate, and measurable environmental benefit.
The originality isn’t about promoting cycling. It’s about redesigning end-of-journey networks in cities so movement becomes easier, healthier and more human.
COACH and Wheelers operate in very different spaces, sport and cities and yet they follow the same originality pattern.
- Reframe the problem around experience, not capability
- Design systems that make better behaviour easier
- Remove friction that others treat as inevitable
- Align incentives with long-term participation
- Build ecosystems that compound value over time
The insight is simple but powerful:
Originality isn’t category specific. It’s transferable thinking.
When originality is treated as system design rather than creative flair, it travels from classrooms to cities, from play to movement.
Be bold, brave, be original.
