Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
53
 www.ideavirus.com
Take the much-coveted Aeron chair from Herman Miller. The company introduced this
puffy, bouncy desk chair for star executives and invented a market where none had
previously existed. Suddenly, you could spend a lot of money on a chair that actually worked
better, as opposed to just one that made you look bigger when you were busy firing people.
When Internet marketing pioneer Site Specific raised its first round of venture capital, the
principals went out and spent $15,000 on these chairs! This is a chair so remarkable, it was
featured on the front page of the 
Wall Street Journal
.
Now, of course, there are plenty of neat, ergonomic desk chairs. One of Herman Miller’s
biggest competitors is betting the farm on their new Leap chair. Their MBA’s have taken a
hard look at Aeron’s success and market share and decided that they can capture x% of the
market. The problem, of course, is that there’s no longer a vacuum. The problem is that
now, instead of spreading a virus about how you can be more comfortable all day, they have
to spread a much smaller, and less compelling virus about why their chair is a little better
than the chair you’ve already heard of.
There are vacuums in your industry. But not for long….

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
54
 www.ideavirus.com
Once It Does Spread, An Ideavirus Follows A Lifecycle. Ignore The Lifecycle
And The Ideavirus Dies Out. Feed It Properly And You Can Ride It For A Long
Time.
Tom Peters co-wrote 
In Search of Excellence
nearly twenty years ago. Through some smart
marketing moves (not to mention a great virus) the book became an epidemic and turned
into the bestselling business book ever written.
Tom’s career could have followed the arc of almost every other business writer… a big hit
followed by a long decline into obscurity. But instead of ignoring the lifecycle, Tom insisted
on riding it.
And he’s still riding it today. Every few years he unleashes a new ideavirus. He writes
mindblowing articles (like the “Brand Called You” cover piece for 
Fast Company
a few years
ago) and follows up with books and exhausting worldwide speaking tours. When he shows
up in a town to give a speech, perhaps a third of the people there are dyed-in-the-wool Tom
Peters fans. And the rest of the audience? Brought there by the fans, exposed to his virus,
ready to be turned into fans.
By leveraging the base that his first book brought him, Tom has built a career out of
launching new ideaviruses. Sure, none of them were as big as 
In Search of Excellence
, but the
vacuum keeps getting smaller, so the opportunities are smaller.
Other companies and ideas have ridden their first wave and then disappeared. People no
longer clamor to dance the Hustle or to get into Studio 54. They don’t visit the once hot
jennicam website or pay a premium for front row seats at 
Cats
. Why? Because instead of
institutionalizing the process of improving, honing and launching new ideaviruses to replace
the dying ones, the “owners” of these viruses milked them until they died.

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