Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
They lose touch with the hive and fall in love with their own taste.
Without the feedback loop
the hive provides, they “lose their touch.” Someone who had a seemingly hot hand starts
failing.
Warren Buffet is a brilliant stock market investor with an extraordinary ability to understand
what other people are going to want to invest in. But when Internet mania started to hit the
stock market, Buffet lost his ability to predict what the hive would predict. I think he DID
know, but overruled his sense of what would happen with his own common sense. Buffet left
billions of dollars of profit on the table because he refused to believe that the Internet stock
ideavirus would spread across the hive of investors.
They stop thinking of themselves as fashion editors and start to believe that they are fashion
makers.
Rather than acting like someone who has a sense as to what virus will hit the hive
next, they believe that they are respected enough by the hive to FORCE them to accept the
next virus.
Fashion designers are famous for this, as are rock groups, authors and product marketers.
Take a look at New Coke—the biggest flaw in the introduction of this product was that
Coke believed that if they willed the consumer to adopt a new formula, the consumer would
do as they were told. Instead of spreading like a virus from a respected hive member, they
tried to ram the formula for New Coke on the hive. The hive rejected it.
The challenge your business faces is finding or training a fashion editor. Launching products
too early is just as bad as launching them too late—if you miss the timing, you fail to fill the
vacuum with your virus. Miss the timing and the profit belongs to someone with better
timing and better fashion sense than you.
To those dedicated to the idea that your business is a factory, all this must sound like heresy.
After all, if you wanted to go into the fashion business, you’d have gone into the fashion
business! But, like it or not, we’re all in the fashion business.

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