You’ve probably heard it a thousand times. Move fast and break things. Pivot or die. If you aren't innovating at the speed of light, you're basically prehistoric. But honestly? Most of that advice is how companies end up as a footnote in a bankruptcy filing. There is a massive, overlooked power in learning how to think like a dinosaur, and I’m not talking about the part where they all went extinct. I’m talking about the 165 million years before that when they absolutely dominated the planet.
Survival isn't always about being the flashiest or the fastest. Sometimes it’s about being so big, so efficient, and so well-adapted to your environment that nothing can touch you.
When people say "don't be a dinosaur," they usually mean don't be slow. But they forget that dinosaurs weren't just big lumps of meat. They were a biological masterpiece of efficiency. If you want your business or your career to last longer than a venture-backed startup’s burn rate, you might want to start looking at the world through a Jurassic lens.
The Resilience of the Giants
Most startups today are like hummingbirds. They’re fast, they’re high-energy, and if they don't find sugar every five seconds, they literally drop dead. Compare that to a sauropod. These things were built for the long haul. To think like a dinosaur is to prioritize structural integrity over temporary speed.
You see this in "Old Guard" companies that everyone loves to mock until the market crashes. Think about a company like IBM or Ford. People have been calling them dinosaurs for decades. Yet, while the "disruptors" of the dot-com era and the crypto boom vanished into thin air, the dinosaurs are still standing. Why? Because they built systems. They have deep roots. They understand that a massive foundation allows you to weather storms that would blow a smaller, "faster" entity away.
It's about scale. But it’s also about the metabolic cost of growth.
Efficiency over Hype
Dinosaurs didn't grow big just for the sake of being huge. They grew big because, in their ecosystem, size was a defensive and competitive advantage. In business, we call this a "moat." If you’re constantly chasing the latest trend—whether it’s AI integration just for the sake of it or some new management fad—you’re burning energy.
A Brachiosaurus didn't spend its day sprinting. It spent its day moving deliberately and consuming resources efficiently.
If you want to think like a dinosaur, you need to stop worrying about being "first to market" and start worrying about being "impossible to remove from the market." Look at Microsoft. They weren't first to the cloud. They weren't first to mobile. They weren't even first to the PC operating system. But they are a dinosaur in the best sense: they wait, they observe, and then they use their massive weight to occupy the space so completely that nobody else can breathe.
The High Metabolic Cost of Being "Agile"
We worship agility. But agility is expensive.
To be agile, you have to stay light. You can't have too much "baggage." But in the real world, baggage is often just another word for "reserves." When the pandemic hit in 2020, the companies that survived weren't necessarily the ones that pivoted the fastest. They were the ones with the biggest cash piles. The ones with the deepest supply chains. The ones who had been "slow" enough to actually build a balance sheet.
Small, agile mammals spent millions of years scurrying in the shadows of the dinosaurs. They only took over because of a literal world-ending fluke. In a normal, functioning ecosystem, the dinosaur wins 99% of the time.
Precision vs. Movement
There’s a misconception that dinosaurs were stupid. They weren't. Research by neurologists like Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel has suggested that some dinosaurs, specifically theropods like the T. rex, might have had as many neurons as a modern baboon. That’s terrifying.
It means they weren't just mindless eating machines. They were calculated.
Thinking like a dinosaur means being calculated with your strikes. Don't move until you have a reason to. In a career context, this means not jumping jobs every 11 months because you're bored. It means building "career capital"—a term coined by Cal Newport—over a decade. It’s about becoming so specialized and so large in your niche that you become an apex predator.
Navigating the Extinction Events
Let’s talk about the asteroid. Because that’s the "gotcha," right? "But they all died!"
Well, first off, birds are dinosaurs. So, technically, they didn't. They adapted. They realized that when the environment changes drastically, you have to shrink your footprint while keeping your core DNA.
To think like a dinosaur in 2026 means knowing when to be a Diplodocus and when to be a sparrow. It’s about "punctuated equilibrium," a theory in evolutionary biology proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. They argued that evolution doesn't always happen at a slow, steady crawl. It happens in massive bursts during times of crisis.
If you are a dinosaur, you use your size to survive the "normal" times. But you keep your eyes open for the "asteroid" moments—the shifts in technology or regulation—that require a radical change in form.
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Real World Example: The Retail "Dinosaurs"
Look at Walmart. Ten years ago, everyone said Amazon was the meteor and Walmart was the Triceratops waiting to die. Walmart was too slow, too physical, too old.
But Walmart did something smart. They used their massive physical footprint—their "dinosaur body"—and turned it into a distribution network. They didn't try to become Amazon overnight. They stayed a dinosaur but updated their brain. Now, they’re one of the few companies actually giving Amazon a run for its money in the grocery and delivery space. They survived the extinction event by leaning into their size, not by pretending they were a tiny startup.
How to Apply the Dinosaur Mindset
You don't need a multi-billion dollar valuation to use this. You can do it in your daily life. It's a shift in perspective.
Stop checking your notifications every three minutes. That’s mammal behavior. That’s "prey" behavior.
A dinosaur doesn't react to every rustle in the bushes. It only reacts to things that actually matter.
Focus on Bone Density
In business, your "bones" are your core values and your essential product. Everything else is just skin and fat. If your bones are weak, you’ll collapse under your own weight.
- Audit your "metabolism": Where are you wasting energy on things that don't help you grow or stay stable?
- Build for the 100-year storm: Don't just plan for next quarter. What happens if the industry stops growing for five years?
- Own your territory: Pick a niche and dominate it so thoroughly that the cost for a competitor to move in is higher than the potential reward.
The Myth of the "Old" Being "Bad"
There is a weird bias in our culture against anything that has lasted. We call old ideas "stale." We call old leaders "out of touch."
But there is a concept called the Lindy Effect. It’s the idea that the longer something has survived, the longer it is likely to survive in the future. If a book has been in print for 50 years, it’ll likely be in print for another 50. If a business model has worked since the 1920s, it’s probably a dinosaur for a reason—it’s built on fundamental human truths, not a passing tech trend.
When you think like a dinosaur, you respect the Lindy Effect. You look for the strategies that worked in 1950 and 1990, because they’ll probably still work in 2030. Human psychology doesn't change as fast as the iPhone does.
Actionable Steps to Build Your Dinosaur Strategy
If you're ready to stop scurrying and start stomping, you need a plan. This isn't about being stubborn. It's about being formidable.
- Identify your Core Asset. What is the one thing you have that cannot be easily replicated by a newcomer? Is it your reputation? A specific patent? A deep relationship with a supplier? This is your "size." Protect it at all costs.
- Reduce "Jitter." Stop making small, frantic changes to your strategy. Pick a direction and move with momentum. A massive object is hard to stop once it’s moving, but it’s also hard to get started. Don't waste that starting energy by changing direction every week.
- Ignore the "Mammals." There will always be people telling you that you're too slow, that you're missing out on the "next big thing" (NFTs, anyone?). Let them scurry. Most of them will be gone by next season.
- Develop "Armor." Build systems that protect you from external shocks. This means diversifying your income, keeping a low debt-to-income ratio, and having a "redundancy" plan for your most critical operations.
Survival is the only metric that matters in the long run. You can be the fastest, coolest, most "disruptive" person in the room, but if you're not there in ten years, you lost. The dinosaurs didn't lose for 165 million years. That’s a winning streak worth studying.
Start looking at your projects with a longer timeline. Ask yourself: "Will this matter in a decade?" If the answer is no, you're just playing around. If the answer is yes, then it’s time to put on some weight, grow some scales, and start acting like the giant you were meant to be.
Invest in things that scale. Invest in things that last. Build a legacy that requires a geological era to erase. That is what it truly means to think like a dinosaur.