When everyone’s asking how to make it better, ask how to make it different.

Better is a competition on somebody else’s terms, and it has a crowd already fighting on it. Improving the same thing everyone is improving gets you a slightly higher place in a line. Different changes the question being asked, which is harder to judge and much harder to catch up to. Most things that stood out did not win the existing race.

Ask what everyone in your area is trying to optimize, then ask what they all assume. Try the version that breaks the assumption instead of the version that scores higher. Even if you end up back on the main road, you now know why you are on it.