How Are You Exploiting Chaos? Wat... How are WE?

0 Comment(s) | Posted Sep 24, 2009 by Pat Morrell

Patrick Morrell

I was clicking through Business Week this morning and happened on one of their best slide shows to date.  Profiling the latest book from Jeremy Gutsche, Exploiting Chaos, BW assembled its own list of 24 Ways to Exploit Crisis.

Particularly as a service-based start-up in the new media space, we at Three Ships Media love this stuff.  It’s inspiring, challenging, and thought-provoking.  It compels you to get out of the weeds and start thinking about the intangibles that will make your business effective.  The culture you’ll create, the risks you’ll take, the unique value proposition you’ll offer (and continually redefine), and the marketspace you (hopefully) will occupy.

I defy not to feel inspired to go redefine and innovate like a mad man after clicking this through.

We pulled out the several that apply most explicitly to social media (see below), but I strongly, strongly encourage you to check out the rest of the slideshow.

Learn from Failure
John Grisham was rejected by a dozen publishers before getting a deal. As a startup, Cisco (CSCO) was rejected by 76 venture capitalists before landing money. Thomas Edison, in his words, “discovered 1,000 ways not to make a light bulb” before hitting on a design that worked.
Lesson: Successful ideas first require excessive testing and experimental failure.

Meet Your Customer
General Motors was surprised when the Escalade, an SUV targeted at older, affluent males, became an icon for hip hop culture. To learn about his new customers, Cadillac’s head of external design went to a gritty corner in Detroit, waited for an Escalade to roll by, and asked the driver if he could join him.
Lesson: Customer obsession can be the fastest ways to gain perspective

Packaging Matters
In 2007 violinist Joshua Bell, who earns some $1,000 a minute when he’s on-stage at a high-end performance space such as Carnegie Hall, played Bach in the DC Metro during rush hour. Just seven people stopped to listen, and he earned $35. Bell is one of the world’s best violinists, but when he wasn’t packaged right, he didn’t sell well.
Lesson: The medium can ruin your message.

Filed under: Emerging Media, Entrepreneurship