By: Chuck Frey
Seth Godin’s new book, Free Prize Inside, is focused on helping you to uncover clever, insightful ideas that they you can use to make your product, service or organization remarkable — a Purple Dow, in Godin’s parlance. Here’s an excerpt from his condensed summary of the book, which explains why these soft innovations are like a free prize to your company.
Seth Godin’s new book, Free Prize Inside, is focused on helping you to uncover clever, insightful ideas that they you can use to make your product, service or organization remarkable — a “Purple Dow,” in Godin’s parlance. Here’s an excerpt from his condensed summary of the book, which explains why these “soft innovations” are like a “free prize” to your company:
“Soft innovations (are) clever, insightful, useful small ideas that just about anyone in an organization can think up. Soft innovations can make your product into a Purple Cow, they can make it remarkable. They do this by solving a problem that’s peripheral to what your product is ostensibly about. It’s a second reason to buy the thing, and perhaps a first reason to talk about it… I call this sort of innovation (when it succeeds) as Free Prize, because the revenue associated with it is far greater than the cost of implementing it.”
I like the way Godin in effect “democratizes” innovation — it’s not a province of an anointed few in corporate strategy or R&D, but an ongoing activity that every employee should be challenged to embrace.
Godin also indicates that his new book is about championing ideas:
“Championing an idea is essential, but no one ever taught us how to do it. By adopting the posture of the champion and following in the path of those that have successfully done it in the past, you can learn how to make something happen.”
Free Prize Inside, which is due out on May 11th, sounds very interesting. Thanks to William Reed and Renee Hopkins for helping to put it on my radar screen! (Click here to buy it from Amazon.com)