Unleashing the Ideavirus (2 of 87)

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COPYRIGHT
Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin. Copyright 2001 by Do You Zoom, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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SECTION 1: Why Ideas Matter

Farms, Factories And Idea Merchants

Imagine for a second that you’re at your business school reunion, trading lies and bragging about how successful you are and are about to become. Frank the jock talks about the dot-com company he just started. Suzie the ex-banker is now focusing her energy on rebuilding Eastern Europe. And then the group looks at you. With a wry look of amusement, you answer:

“Well, the future—the really big money—is in owning a farm. A small one, maybe 100 acres. I intend to invest in a tractor of course, and expect that in just a few years my husband and I can cash out and buy ourselves a nice little brownstone in the city.”

Ludicrous, no? While owning a farm may bring tremendous lifestyle benefits, it hasn’t been a ticket to wealth for, say, 200 years.

What about owning a factory then? Perhaps the road to riches in the new economy would be to buy yourself a hot-stamping press and start turning out steel widgets. Get the UAW to organize your small, dedicated staff of craftsmen and you’re on your way to robber-baron status.

Most of us can agree that the big money went out of owning a factory about thirty years ago. When you’ve got high fixed costs and you’re competing against other folks who also know how to produce both quantity and quality, unseemly profits fly right out the window.

Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.

Alas, nobody has a clue how to build a farm for ideas, or even a factory for ideas. We recognize that ideas are driving the economy, ideas are making people rich and most important, ideas are changing the world. Even though we’re clueless about how to best organize the production of ideas, one thing is clear: if you can get people to accept and embrace and adore and cherish your ideas, you win. You win financially, you gain power and you change the world in which we live.

So how do you win? What do you need to do to change the status quo of whatever industry you’re in, or, if you’re lucky, to change the world?

If you’re a farmer, you want nothing more than a high price for your soybeans. If you’re a manufacturer of consumer goods, you want a display at the cash register at Wal-Mart. But what if you’re an idea merchant?

The holy grail for anyone who trafficks in ideas is this: to unleash an ideavirus.

An idea that just sits there is worthless. But an idea that moves and grows and infects everyone it touches... that’s an ideavirus.

In the old days, there was a limit on how many people you could feed with the corn from your farm or the widgets from your factory. But ideas not only replicate easily and well, they get more powerful and more valuable as you deliver them to more people.

How does an ideavirus manifest itself? Where does it live? What does it look like? It’s useful to think of ideas of every sort as being similar. I call them manifestos. An idea manifesto is a powerful, logical “essay” that assembles a bunch of existing ideas and creates a new one. Sometimes a manifesto is a written essay. But it can be an image, a song, a cool product or process... the medium doesn’t matter. The message does. By lumping all sorts of ideas—regardless of format—into the same category (manifestos) it’s much easier to think of them as versions of the same thing. As long as you can use your manifesto to change the way people think, talk or act... you can create value.

Not only is this an essay about ideas and ideaviruses...it’s also a manifesto striving to become an ideavirus! If this manifesto changes your mind about marketing and ideas, maybe you’ll share it with a friend. Or two. Or with your entire company. If that happens, this idea will become an ideavirus, and spread and gain in value.

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