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Purple Cow
your people to start with a blank sheet of paper and figure
out what they’d do if they could do just about anything. If
they weren’t afraid of failing, what’s the most audacious
thing they’d try
The new CEO of Best Buy, Brad Anderson, is a brilliant
strategist. He’s got a sharp eye for the key moments in the
evolution of his company. He said, “Instead of selling
what we wanted to sell, we sold what people wanted us to
sell, and then figured out how to make money doing it.
Every time we talked to our customers, they wanted us to
follow the path that turned out to be the hardest possible
path we could follow. And every time, that path was the
right path.”
Best Buy could have done what just about every other
regional electronics retailer facing a slowdown does: Buy
some more newspaper ads. Play with the pricing. Lay some
people off. Whine a bit and buckle down. Instead, Best
Buy opted to follow a harder path, one that led to a
remarkable experience for the consumer. At first, this
looked like a longer, slower way to make their business
grow, but in retrospect, it was a lot faster (and a lot cheaper)
than running a bunch of boring ads and staying just
where they were.
Remarkable isn’t always about changing the biggest
machine in your factory. It can be the way you answer
the phone, launch a new brand, or price a revision to
your software. Getting in the habit of doing the
“unsafe” thing every time you have the opportunity is
the best way to learn to project – you get practice at
seeing what’s working and what’s not.
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