Life cycle of an idea
The idea that stuck to my mind from “In search of excellence” was the abundance of data and intelligent use of software, where you could change few variables and get an accurate estimate, triumphed over long term business relationships to establish new standards of efficiency and decision making. Tom Peters illustrated this through the story of an electric appliances company, if I remember right. Much water has gone down the lane, the data driven decisionmaking is not new anymore and is pretty much taken for granted. Now most of the customers are looking for the human emotional connection anyone has to offer, over and above the correct solutions. Much of the decision making gets weighed towards the emotional connection rather than a rational choice. Very often the question people ask themselves is, “is this the kind of partner I want to be with when I face trouble?”
A very similar phenomenon happened in the world of marketing. When broadcast media was new, there was a strong relevance for ads and the premium you paid for eyeballs. Now the broadcast media is loathed and the Ads despised, because of the overuse of marketing messages. People respond better to genuine human voices and recommendations – this is where amazon and facebook thrives
Each idea has a life of its own. It mostly has more than one life. Each organisation or individual adopts the idea at a different time period and the life of the idea is greatly influenced by the nature of that entity. For example the idea mentioned at the beginning of this post entered my mind 4 years ago and now it has transformed into something new. The same idea may have ruled through many of the organisations for a much longer period
