Sheer innovation is not enough

In 1912, Otto Frederick Rohwedder  an American inventor and engineer who created the first automatic bread-slicing machine for commercial use. It was first used by the Chillicothe Baking Company.What a great idea: a simple machine that could take a loaf  of bread and...slice it. The machine was a complete failure.

This was the beginning of the advertising age, and that meant that a good product with lousy marketing had very little chance of success. In 1927 Rohwedder successfully designed a machine that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it. In 1930 Continental Baking Company introduced Wonder Bread as a sliced bread.

It wasn’t until about twenty years later the first innovation first automatic bread-slicing machine – when a new brand called Wonder started marketing sliced bread – that the invention caught on. It was the packaging and the advertising (“builds strong bodies twelve ways”) that worked, not the sheer convenience and innovation of pre-slicing bread.

Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth noticing,exceptional, new. Interesting-  It’s a Purple Cow.

-Boring stuff is invisible. It’s a brown cow.

In the book “Purple Cow” the author Seth Godin talks about why you need to put a Purple Cow  into everything you build.

Source: “Purple Cow”  by Seth Godin  

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Don’t try to be the ‘next’

“Don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.” -Seth Godin

John Francis "Jack" Welch  is an American business executive, author, and chemical engineer. He was chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose 4,000% .

When Jack Welch remade GE, the most fabled decision he made was this: If we can’t be #1 or #2 in an industry, we must get out. Why sell a billion-dollar division that’s making a profit quite happily while ranking #4 in market share? Easy. Because it distracts management attention. It sucks resources and capital and focus and energy. And most of all, it teaches people in the organization that it’s okay not to be the best in the world. Jack quit the dead ends. By doing so, he freed resources to get his other businesses through the Dip.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.

Quit the dead ends- Avoid distraction of attention

Source: “The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick) ” by Seth Godin  

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WHEN TO STICK AND WHEN TO QUIT

“Think of those who, not by fault of inconsistency but by lack of effort, are too unstable to live as they wish, but only live as they have begun.” —SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND, 

In his book The Dip, Seth Godin draws an interesting analogy from the three types of people you see in line at the supermarket. One gets in a short line and sticks to it no matter how slow it is or how much faster the others seem to be going. Another changes lines repeatedly based on whatever he thinks might save a few seconds. And a third switches only once—when it’s clear her line is delayed and there is a clear alternative—nd then continues with her day. He’s urging you to ask: Which type are you?

Seneca is also advising us to be this third type. Just because you’ve begun down one path doesn’t mean you’re committed to it forever, especially if that path turns out to be flawed or impeded. At that same time, this is not an excuse to be flighty or incessantly noncommittal. It takes courage to decide to do things differently and to make a change, as well as discipline and awareness to know that the notion of “Oh, but this looks even better” is a temptation that cannot be endlessly indulged either.

Source: “The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius” by Ryan Holiday

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