Tuesday, June 22, 2004

The Best Things In Life Are Free

"In an excerpt from his new book, Free Prize Inside! , Seth Godin shows how anyone can champion new ideas."

"Most writing on innovation is about paradigm shifts, big projects, huge R&D, and technical innovations. It's about nanotechnology and space farming. Most real innovation, though, is actually about stuff such as fast lube-job shops, cell-phone pricing plans, and purple ketchup.

These are what I like to call 'soft innovations.' That's what really works--the commonsense, creative stuff that requires initiative and curiosity, not an advanced degree. If it satisfies the consumer and gets him to tell other people what you want him to tell them, it's a soft innovation. And if it catches on and becomes something the consumer wants, then it becomes a 'free prize.'

A free prize is the thing that makes a product remarkable. It's the thing that gets talked about. And more often than not, the free prize has nothing to do with the core benefit the product offers. It's something extra. Free prizes are fashionable or fun or surprising. They rarely deliver more of what we were buying in the first place."

Link
Source: Fast Company
See also:
Seth's Blog
IdeaFlow - Corante.com
Disruptive Innovation - AlwaysON

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