Create tomorrow, today with Endgame Thinking
Equipping organizations to be proactive architects of their future.
What does the future look like? For the first time in a long while, we’re venturing into uncharted territory, navigating a future that seems unimaginable. In this landscape of uncertainty, the demand for C-suite leaders to not only plan ahead but also make the right investments to ensure their organizations remain relevant and competitive has never been greater. There is a collective need for a practical, well-defined, and tested methodology that helps business leaders stay adaptable in a changing world while remaining laser-focused on their long-term goals and acutely aware of their operational realities.
Enter Endgame Thinking – a methodology refined over 15 years with a proven track record of creating commercial success and transformative products and solutions for hundreds of enterprises and startups, impacting over 500 million users and counting.
What is Endgame Thinking
Endgame Thinking is a future-driven approach that emphasizes the importance of envisioning a clear, long-term goal or desired outcome – the endgame – for an organization, and then systematically working backwards to realize it through concrete, actionable steps.
Pioneered by our founder and Chairman, Juha Christensen, along with co-founder and CEO, Michael Schreibmann, Endgame Thinking emerges as a radical departure from conventional strategic methodologies with its future-facing yet pragmatic nature. It encourages businesses to place themselves in the future, define a clear outcome they want to achieve, and then continuously examine their operational realities, available resources, market opportunities, and customer needs to ensure every decision made along their evolving journey is a strategic step towards their endgame.
By prioritizing long-term value creation, Endgame Thinking fosters discipline, adaptability, and continuous innovation, ensuring businesses are not only prepared for the future but are actively shaping it. This approach is particularly effective in today's fast-paced, technology-driven business landscape, where agility and foresight are key to enduring success.
Learn more about the Endgame Thinking methodology.
At the core
of our methodology
Begins with a vision
We help you crystalize your future vision – your endgame – and delve into the 'what' and 'why' of your long-term goals, as well as benefits to your end-users.
Blends foresight with insight
We align business ambitions with available resources, organizational capabilities and societal needs, balancing forward-thinking with an accurate awareness of changing market dynamics.
Rooted in operational reality
We gain profound understanding of your operational reality, available resources and organizational capabilities to ensure goals are attainable.
Embraces pragmatism and discipline
We blend short-term achievements and a steadfast focus on long-term value, driving sustainable value creation.
Endgame in action
My journey to Endgame Thinking
In today's digital era, technology serves both as a driver of innovation and a source of disruption, making the business landscape more unpredictable than ever before. I believe I speak for many when I say that we find ourselves at a historical crossroads, uncertain of what the future will hold even a few years from now. The advent of AI technologies is altering the course of our civilization in ways previously unimaginable. More than ever, I am convinced that everyone can benefit from a clearly defined approach that helps us navigate today's fast-changing world without losing sight of our goals and purposes, through a set of steps that keep us grounded and adaptable.
Making ideas real
I have been practicing the core components of Endgame Thinking throughout my life, before formally codifying it and using it to deliver disruptive and impactful solutions for brave brands and startups at scale for over 15 years.
Clients often ask me how I came to create Endgame Thinking and upon reflection, it all stems from my childhood.
I have vivid memories of using Lego to construct everything from simple bridges to large castles. My grandfather, Henry, built handrails, and watching him transform his designs on paper into tangible rails that people used has instilled in me an insatiable need to make every idea real.
Juha Christensen 
Chairman & Co-founder, Star
In addition, I was exposed to the world of entrepreneurship at a young age. My parents owned an aviation business, and I found myself fueling planes and assisting with their day-to-day operations. Every family business owner knows that being disciplined, pragmatic and having a deep sense of responsibility for their customers is crucial for survival.
Fast forward to adulthood, I found myself at the forefront of the technological revolution, leading new business areas such as the mobile division at Microsoft, where technology and design coalesce to produce solutions that fundamentally change how we live. I had to operationalize big ideas within budgets and timelines while still planning ahead and future-proofing my organizations.
Each of these experiences taught me that ideas and execution cannot exist in a vacuum. They must be tethered to the real world through a process that is both visionary and grounded, imaginative yet actionable. This dual focus ensures that every step taken, from the drawing board to the final implementation, is not only a move towards achieving a grand vision but also delivers tangible, meaningful value to those it's intended to serve. It’s this blend of strategic foresight with the ability to deliver disciplined execution and an unwavering focus on value creation that lies at the heart of Endgame Thinking.
Endgame Thinking in business
Endgame Thinking is a future-driven methodology anchored around your long-term goal – your endgame – and constantly adapts your operational realities so you can stay adaptable while ensuring every decision you make is a strategic step toward your goal. This approach offers clarity, direction and a systematic way to address complexity, empowering individuals and organizations to navigate present and future uncertainties with confidence.
By envisioning the future and methodically working backwards, Endgame Thinking calls for a thorough examination of operational realities while fixing on a steadfast endgame that guides actions, even as strategies evolve in response to new technologies, consumer trends, and market dynamics.
Endgame Thinking embodies a forward-looking mindset, combining a disciplined operational approach with the agility and flexibility necessary for adapting tactics in real-time. The iterative process of assessing operational realities, resources, market opportunities, and customer needs informs decision-making, enabling leaders to adeptly navigate the dynamic landscape of strategic planning. This approach ensures responsiveness to immediate changes without compromising long-term goals. It strikes a delicate balance, harmonizing the steadfast pursuit of an ultimate vision with the adaptability required to actualize it.
Our endgame
At Star, our very clear endgame is to be the best possible Sherpa to our clients and create great solutions and products that truly add a long-standing impact to their business and their customers in the realms of the changing world. While the future is changing in a way that may seem unimaginable, Endgame Thinking can help businesses become proactive architects of their future and provide a long-standing framework that helps them thrive in the future, whatever it may hold.
