Unleashing the Ideavirus (Book Review)
Seth Godin’s brilliant book titled Unleashing the Ideavirus has been on my reading list for a few weeks but I’ve only just now put it down after several days reading. What I really like about his books are that I seem to walk away with ideas and creative enthusiasm and they easily transpose across onto projects I’m currently working on. This book was no different. From simple suggestions like putting a Send this to a Friend link on a useful application to seeding the idea across influential sneezers. And, he admits, much of this book is obvious (although I’d suggest that is true after the fact).
How and why do some ideas gain momentum and a life of their own? Seth walks the reader through the formula for generating an evironment where your idea, if its the right idea at the right time, is able to flourish and multiply. Some of it may well be luck but a lot of it can be influenced to load the odds in your favour. When to charge money and when not to? Who to expose your idea to for the maximum impact? And how to cross that chasm between early adopters and the rest of the market.
Pre-chasm people want something cool. Post-chasm people want something that works.Seth Godin
He also provides a new vocabulary of promiscuous and powerful sneezers who spread your idea through hives with velocity, vector and smoothness using a medium. Your idea also needs persistence and an amplifier so that it gets heard. And as a general rule an idea virus thrives in a vacuum. But critically, what you’re really going to have to achieve is permission. You need to be able to capitalise on your next idea so it can spread further faster than this one. Ask the user if you can send them emails (get permission to market to them) and use that to springboard your next idea virus. The point being that ideas are valuable for their newness and have a lifecycle that you can’t ignore.
As Seth points out very early in the book the days of getting rich from manufacturing goods are long gone. The true currency of success in today’s terms are ideas, as can be seen by the number of organisations on the Fortune 500 list now selling something you can’t hold in your hands.
We need to be idea merchants and market accordingly. Simply, a brilliant book.
