How to get your Ideas to Spread - Seth Godin

In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age. His newest interest: the tribes we lead.

"Seth Godin may be the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age," Mary Kuntz wrote in Business Week nearly a decade ago. "Instead of widgets or car parts, he specializes in ideas -- usually, but not always, his own." In fact, he's as focused on spreading ideas as he is on the ideas themselves.

Godin has produced several critically acclaimed and attention-grabbing books, including Permission Marketing, All Marketers Are Liars, and Purple Cow (which was distributed in a milk carton). In 2005, Godin founded Squidoo.com, a Web site where users can share links and information about an idea or topic important to them.

“[Godin] is a demigod on the Web, a best-selling author, highly sought-after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger. He is uniquely respected for his understanding of the Internet.” — Forbes.com

Excerpts from Transcipt

…  I think that the way you're going to get what you want, or cause the change that you want to change, to happen, is to figure out a way to get your ideas to spread.

… what we are living in is a century of idea diffusion. That people who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win.

… Now, this is Copernicus, and he was right, when he was talking to anyone who needs to hear your idea. "The world revolves around me." Me, me, me, me. My favorite person — me. I don't want to get email from anybody; I want to get "memail."

… in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff.

… The thing that's going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built, is: "Is it remarkable?" And "remarkable" is a really cool word, because we think it just means "neat," but it also means "worth making a remark about." And that is the essence of where idea diffusion is going.

… A couple of quick rules to wrap up. The first one is: Design is free when you get to scale. The people who come up with stuff that's remarkable more often than not figure out how to put design to work for them.

Number two: The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe. The safe thing to do now is to be at the fringes, be remarkable.

And being very good is one of the worst things you can possibly do. Very good is boring. Very good is average. If it's very good, it's not going to work, because no one's going to notice it.

… So what you need to do is figure out who does care. Who is going to raise their hand and say, "I want to hear what you're doing next," and sell something to them.

When Ideas have Sex - Matt Ridley

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Matt Ridley argues that, through history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, "ideas having sex with each other." The sophistication of the modern world, says Ridley, lies not in individual intelligence or imagination; it is a collective enterprise. In his book The Rational Optimist, Ridley (whose previous works include Genome and Nature via Nurture) sweeps the entire arc of human history to powerfully argue that "prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else."

It is our habit of trade, idea-sharing and specialization that has created the collective brain which set human living standards on a rising trend. This, he says, "holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead -- because ideas are having sex with each other as never before."

“Ridley systematically builds a case through copious data and countless studies that “the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better sheltered, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been."” 

— Scientific American