Seth’s Blog: Edgecraft instead of brainstorming
Edgecraft instead of brainstorming
One of the challenges of brainstorming a new idea is that there’s too much freedom. With too many possibilities, we can seize up, unable to think of much of anything.
In established organizations, this is particularly difficult, because the first thing the lizard brain says to you is, ”don’t say that, because if they like it, you’re going to be the one who has to build it.
“Instead, consider the notion of edgecraft:
1. Find an edge… a free prize that has been shown to make a product or service remarkable.
2. Go all the way to that edge—as far from the center as the consumers you are trying to reach dare you to go.
You must go all the way to the edge… accepting compromise doesn’t make sense. Running a restaurant where the free prize is your slightly attractive waitstaff won’t work—they’ve got to be supermodels or weightlifters or identical twins. You only create a free prize when you go all the way to the edge and create something remarkable.
The cheapest, easiest, best designed, funniest, most expensive, most productive, most respected, cleanest, loudest…