Seth's Blog : The second time you create that breakthrough



The second time you create that breakthrough

...it only takes a few minutes.  Because it's not a breakthrough.

Breakthroughs are slow because you don't know how to do it...

Re-creation is fast, because you already know how.

The art of the breakthrough is the practice of figuring out all the ways to not do it on your way to an insight.

Don't curse the dead ends and the failures. They're the key element of the work you're doing. 

We find our way by getting lost. Anything other than that is called reading a map.

       

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• Defeat, defend or transform
• The flip is elusive
• To earn our attention, there needs to be tension
• Effort
• First chance, best chance

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Seth's Blog : Defeat, defend or transform



Defeat, defend or transform

Most new projects fall into one of three categories:

You might seek to defeat the market leader, to enter as a challenger alternative. Your goal here is to cause someone to switch.

Or you might seek to defend yourself against an aggressive challenger, upgrading or updating your work to keep people from switching.

Most difficult, quite rare and precious is the idea of transformation. Turning someone who isn't already engaged in this category into someone who cares about what you've created.

Here's what isn't worth your time: You can buy this from anyone, and we're anyone.

       

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More Recent Articles

• The flip is elusive
• To earn our attention, there needs to be tension
• Effort
• First chance, best chance
• Good decisions (and sunk costs)

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Seth's Blog : The flip is elusive



The flip is elusive

For a generation after people realized that smoking would kill them, many smart, informed people still smoked. Then, many of them stopped.

After discovering that an expensive luxury good is made out of the same materials as a cheaper alternative, many people stick with the expensive one. And then they gradually stop going out of their way to pay more.

After a technology breakthrough makes it clear that a new approach is faster, cheaper and more reliable, many people stick with the old way. Until they don't.

And inevitably, it doesn't matter how much people discover about their favorite candidate, they seem impervious to revelations, facts and the opinions of others. For a while, sometimes a very long while. But then, they assert that all along they knew something was amiss and find a new person to align with.

Computers don't work this way. Cats don't have a relationship like this with hot stoves. Imaginary logical detectives always get the message the first time.

For the rest of us, though, the flip isn't something that happens at the first glance or encounter with new evidence.

This doesn't mean the evidence doesn't matter.

It means that we're bad at admitting we were wrong.

Bad at giving up one view of the world to embrace the other.

Mostly, we're bad at abandoning our peers, our habits and our view of ourselves.

If you want to change people's minds, you need more than evidence. You need persistence. And empathy. And mostly, you need the resources to keep showing up, peeling off one person after another, surrounding a cultural problem with a cultural solution.

       

• Email to a friend •

More Recent Articles

• To earn our attention, there needs to be tension
• Effort
• First chance, best chance
• Good decisions (and sunk costs)
• Speed is relative

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