In mid-September 2008, the British artist Damien Hirst broke all rules of the art market. He bypassed conventional distribution channels — dealers and gallery owners — by directly partnering with Sotheby’s auction house, which sold more than 200 pieces of his work. For the first time, Sotheby’s auctioned artworks that were less than two years old and Hirst earned more than £110 million from the auction.

In addition, Hirst understood that the late 20th century had seen the emergence of non-traditional art buyers — a new who that the contemporary art world of artists, dealers, curators, and gallery owners had been slow to serve. These were consumers, many with relatively new wealth, who did not buy for artistic interest alone; they bought for fun or status or invested to sell at a profit later.

Another of Hirst’s early insights was his recognition that, by the end of the 20th century, the established art world had come to define “works of art” rather narrowly. In the early years of Hirst’s career, both he - and his collaborator Charles Saatchi - identified the need to create a new what: images, symbols, and signs buyers could acknowledge as unique, whether they were attracted to them or not.

But Hirst did not only question the who and what of the established art world. He also challenged established approaches to how art should be exhibited, produced and sold. Instead of using just the traditional route of distributing art through dealers, he also adopted the role of curator. He understood that the rise of curators in identifying and defining the parameters of artistic talent had reduced the ability of individual artists to build their own personal brands. Furthermore, an explosion in the number of trained and talented artists in the United Kingdom had meant that building a reputation had become increasingly difficult.

While in the past the role of the curator was to select and often interpret works of art by writing labels, catalogue essays and other supporting content for an exhibition, this role was changing with the rise of artists organizing exhibitions. Hirst saw that there was a need to redefine the rules in order to create a new market space. He did this by initiating shows and then leveraging these shows to position his own artwork. Hirst also created a new how in terms of art production. Although he participated physically in the making of early works, he had always needed assistants. By the late 1990s the sheer volume of work produced necessitated a "factory”, with Hirst working closely with his main art production company called Science Ltd. Furthermore Hirst believed that modern-day artists, especially those already exhibiting at the high end of the market, had been largely blind to yet another new how — the sale of contemporary art through auction houses. For centuries, artists had distributed their artworks through dealers and galleries, with auction houses typically selling the art of collectors rather than works directly from artists. Hirst’s auction at Sotheby’s represented the first time that an artist of his standing had put work directly into the public market rather than operating through dealers and galleries that charged larger commissions.

Much of the established theory and approaches to competitive strategy concentrate on how a firm can analyze the dynamics within an established industry and then develop an approach to position itself. There is a significant focus upon understanding established competitors and developing methods to beat incumbent firms with lower cost or product differentiation. Equally, firms are encouraged to identify existing customer demand and then to serve that demand faster or better than other firms. While these approaches are important, they can result in so-called inattentional blindness. It is a phenomenon that can lead even the most experienced managers to ignore opportunities, fail to create new market space or strategically innovate. To overcome this blindness, an entrepreneur should always ask himself three questions:

1. Who are the customers that our organization does not see?
2. What are the products and services that we are blocking from our consciousness?
3. Are we blind to new ways of how we might operate our business?