Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Make it work before you make a splash

Seth Godin had a great post today about launching innovations. Read here. His basic point is that some of the greatest innovations in our time launched in obscurity and then became known as they delivered value.

This sounds very practical and obvious, but have you noticed that we don't operate this way. Instead we tend to launch our innovations with as much fanfare as we can afford. If you stop and ask yourself why we do this, a few things come to mind:
1. We are insecure about our idea and we need others to affirm our efforts and sacrifice.
2. We think that if people know early they will be involved in our innovation.
3. We want to stamp our name on the idea before someone else takes it.
4. Our boss, investors, or board tell us we need to make the launch a big deal.

I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but these come to mind.

So next time you are in the planning stages for an innovation launch, consider taking the humble, quiet approach to your innovation and build success based on service rather than PR.

1 comment:

Jeff said...

Awesome. Thanks.