Let Me Be Great!!!

So a few months back, my wife bought a new Macbook Pro. She was getting ready to leave the country for an extended business trip and we decided that it would be best to get all of her tech up to date since she isn't the tech person in the family. We also took a trip to our nearest Apple store and had them give her phone a once-over and replace the battery to make sure she'd be good to go. As you can probably tell, we're an Apple family. If you're not an Apple person / family, that's ok. We have our reasons for liking Apple products and so that's what we use. It's entirely possible that there's another solution that would serve our purposes better, but the trade-offs don't make the proposition worth it to us. What's interesting is that whenever I find myself among non-Apple people, someone always thinks it necessary to make some disparaging remark about our iDevices. I'm sure non-Apple people can attest that they've probably experienced the same thing from Apple people. In fact, if you take this last paragraph and substitute the word "Apple" for your operating system of choice (Android I suppose, since the rest of the mobile operating systems are essentially extinct) I suspect the scenario wouldn't be that far from the truth.

The above image and statement is entirely correct
and non-debatable.

Why is that? We all have been endowed by our creator with the right to choose. What's sad is that many of us have begun to adopt the belief that others should only be able to choose if that choice lines up with ours. Many of us have even extrapolated that perspective to essentially believing that there are two views: our view, and the wrong view. This ever increasing close-mindedness that's becoming more and more prevalent within the populous is creating some interesting problems. When we refuse to acknowledge the possibility that we might not be correct, it creates a negative feedback loop that I've begun to refer to as SIPMOP (self induced permanent myopia of perspective).


So why am I talking about preferences and perspectives in an entertainment business blog? SIPMOP is an interesting thing that content creators and business-people alike have to grapple with. It's very seldom, if ever that we subject ourselves to double blind tests of preferences. As such, many people have set preferences simply because they have set preferences. I know that sounds like double talk, but the truth is that many people only prefer certain things a certain way because that's what they've always preferred and they refuse to entertain any ideas that run contrary to their established perspectives.

This concept doesn't exist. Something can be either one
or the other, not both!

What does this mean for businesses hoping to bring an idea / concept / product / service to market that is different from what the populous is familiar with. In short, it's a challenge to say the least. There's a running joke in the music industry that if you tell someone you're an artist they'll ask you to describe your music by telling them what it's like. The same can be said of many products and services. If I were to tell you I was designing an all new vehicle that I would be bringing to market, the first thing you'd ask is "What's it gonna be like? Will it be like a truck, or a car, or an SUV, or a minivan?" If I were to reply "Not like any of those" most people would simply say "Ok then, good luck with that." A small minority would probe further just out of curiosity, but that just illustrates the point that most people have no interest in anything that doesn't fit into their boxes of preconceived ideas. This causes most business to create and market products that present a very slight twist on concepts that consumers are already familiar with. "You may own a cell phone, but do you own a cell phone with twice as much memory? This is game changing, no, paradigm shifting!" So goes the narrative of most startups and pretty much anyone trying to sell you a newer version of something that you already have.

Where does that leave innovators that truly have paradigm shifting ideas. Perhaps it's because I'm a comic book fan, or because I just finished watching yet another comic book movie trailer, but for this example I'm going to rewind us to ten years ago when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was birthed. The idea may not seem that earth shattering now with hindsight, but I think it's important to set that moment in the context of its time.

This is an actual photograph of a rotten tomato in the wild. They
can be found in cubicles in their Beverly Hill office location.

The early 2000's was not a good time for superhero movies. 2003 saw Eric Bana's portrayal of the Incredible Hulk get only a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, Superman Returns got lukewarm to terrible reviews in 2006, and it's well known that Marvel fans pretty much hated the X-Men films. There were a few bright spots, but overall, this was the ecosystem within which Avi Arad and Kevin Feige decided "You know what this world need's, a Marvel Cinematic Universe." It's hard to imagine what the reception was in those board rooms when they tried to pitch that idea; not to mention how difficult it must have been to get funding. I'd imagine that they initially pitched the idea of funding Iron Man as a hero movie not much different from the others. The creators, though, had the idea all along of a shared universe. From that perspective, it seems like the lesson is that in order to accomplish great things one must often conceal their intentions and not do too much at once. By giving the people something that was similar to what they were familiar with but not so different as to invoke an immediate reflex of rejection and sticking to what was planned from the beginning, the team at Marvel were able to accomplish what no other comic franchise has before or since, a cohesive shared universe that has been critically and commercially successful and raised the bar on what the art form can be.

What does this mean for you innovators and creators out there? Don't be afraid to dream big and imagine amazing things. Don't limit your creativity to what you already see around you, but while you imagine, don't forget about SIPMOP. Lot's of amazing ideas never get off the ground because their creators fail to compensate for the lack of imagination of everyone else. Just because you want to design an aircraft that folds space-time in order to achieve travel times that are currently unfathomable doesn't mean you have to tell everyone that. Build the run-of-the-mill airplane or spaceship, just build it slightly better than anyone else's and use the proceeds to fund your space-time folding vehicle in your spare time. Understand that most people don't have the imagination to believe in anything they can't see and some won't believe in something even when it's literally / figuratively staring them right in the face. I know, the logic of SIPMOP doesn't make much logical sense but neither do the preferences of many customers. Regardless, at least now you know that it exists and despite how nonsensical it may be, many people use it to make decisions every day. As such, you'll need to consider it the next time you start development on that earth moving, space-time folding app that's both iOS and Android compatible.