Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
34
 www.ideavirus.com
There’s A Tremendous Hunger To Understand The New And To Remain On The
Cutting Edge.
Jed Clampett discovered that finding oil on his property was a sure road to riches. Today, the
road seems to be paved with awareness. If you know what’s news, if you know what’s the
latest, hottest, most impactful new idea, it’s much easier to succeed. You can profit in the
stock market, do better in politics, find breakthroughs in science, or programming or
marketing.
Why does this matter? Because in a society where the new isn’t valued, your social standing
doesn’t increase when you become a nerd. And because ideaviruses are really nothing but
amplified gossip about new stuff, they can’t take root in a culture that doesn’t care about the
new.
Take a look at the Top 40 charts in Billboard magazine. Thirty or forty years ago, a record
could easily stay on the list for six months or more. Today, new records come and go much
faster. Why? Because we are happily saturated in the current hit, and then move on.
Last year, 1,778 business books were published in the U.S. alone. Every one of them got read
by someone, some by an awful lot of people. Why? Because as our world changes faster and
faster and faster, 
knowing
is just as important as having. And that makes the population ready
and eager for the next ideavirus.
As the speed of new ideas entering the community has increased, so has our respect for
people who know. And because it’s valuable, we’re open to both hearing about the new and
telling others about it.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
35
 www.ideavirus.com
While Early Adopters (The Nerds Who Always Want To Know About The Cool
New Thing In Their Field) Have Always Existed, Now We’ve Got More Nerds
Than Ever Before. If You’re Reading This, You’re A Nerd!
The Internet turned us all into nerds. AltaVista isn’t cool any more—google.com is. Don’t
use the Palm, that’s passé. Try this Handspring instead. Suddenly we’re ready, willing and
able to be at the bleeding edge, all the time.
The profit from creating and owning an ideavirus is huge, huger than it ever was before. It
used to be that only a few stereotypical nerds cared about the latest pocket calculator. Today,
you’ll see people talking about their handheld computer on the subway. It used to be that
only a few people knew about the latest Salsa hit out of Mexico or the coolest new chef in
Los Angeles. Today, the roles are totally reversed. Your parents are nerds!
It’s not just that our society is rewarding people who are sensitive enough or smart enough or
cool enough to know about the next new thing. It’s that many of us have crossed over a line
and gone from being the vast majority who waited for something to become
mainstream—we’ve become the early adopters, the folks on the bleeding edge who actually
seek out innovation. The combined circulation of 
Wired
, 
Fast Company
and 
PC Magazine
is
rapidly approaching the total circulation of 
Sports Illustrated
.
Because the population has shifted, the sweet spot has shifted. Companies no longer make
most of their money harvesting money from the laggards who finally get around to buying
something at K-Mart. They make their money the first day, the first week, the first month an
idea is out there.
If something is new and different and exciting and getting buzzed about, we want to know
about it, be part of it. The fashion is now to be in fashion, and ideas are the way we keep up.

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