Purple Cow by Seth Godin Read Free Book Online Page A

isn’t easy to criticize, but it’s also not very successful, is it?
    Drugstore.com is another boring company. They have a boring Web site, selling boring stuff. (When was the last time someone got excited about Braun launching a new toothbrush?) Is there much to criticize about the way they do business? Not really. But there’s no Cow there. As a result, very few new customers go out of their way to do business with them.
    So how are you going to predict which ideas are going to backfire and which are guaranteed to be worth the hard work they take to launch? The short answer: You can’t.
    Hey, if it was easy to become a rock star, everyone would do it!
    You can’t know if your Purple Cow is guaranteed to work. You can’t know if it’s remarkable enough or too risky. That’s the point. It’s the very unpredictability of the outcome that makes it work.
    The lesson is simple—boring always leads to failure. 1 Boring is always the most risky strategy. Smart businesspeople realize this, and they work to minimize (but not eliminate) the risk from the process. They know that sometimes it’s not going to work, but they accept the fact that that’s okay.

Follow the Leader
     
    Why do birds fly in formation? Because the birds that follow the leader have an easier flight. The leader breaks the wind resistance, and the following birds can fly far more efficiently. Without the triangle formation, Canada geese would never have enough energy to make it to the end of their long migration.
    A lot of risk-averse businesspeople believe that they can follow a similar strategy. They think they can wait until a leader demonstrates a breakthrough idea, and then rush to copy it, enjoying the break in wind resistance from the leader.
    If you watch the flock closely, though, you’ll notice that the flock doesn’t really fly in formation. Every few minutes, one of the birds from the back of the flock will break away, fly to the front, and take over, giving the previous leader a chance to move to the back and take a break.
    The problem with people who would avoid a remarkable career is that they never end up as the leader. They decide to work for a big company, intentionally functioning as an anonymous drone, staying way back to avoid risk and criticism. If they make a mistake and choose the wrong bird to follow, they lose. When a big company lays off ten thousand people, most of those people probably don’t deserve to get fired. They were doing what they were told, staying within the boundaries, and following instructions. Alas, they picked the wrong lead bird.
    Even if you find a flock that’s pretty safe, in our turbulent world, it’s harder and harder to stay in formation, and we often find ourselves scurrying to find a new flock. The ability to lead is thus even more important because when your flock fades away, there may be no other flock handy.
    This is true not just for individual careers, of course. Companies have the same trouble. They follow an industry leader that stumbles. Or they launch a thousand imitations of their first breakthrough product-never realizing that the market is drying up.
    For years, the record business has been dominated by a few major players, and they work hard to follow each other’s lead. The labels have similar pricing, merchant policies, contracts, and packaging. Each label avoids criticism by sticking with the pack.
    But when the market changes—when technology reshuffles the deck—the record labels are all in trouble. With no practice leading, no practice trying the unknown, they’re trapped, panicked, and in serious trouble. Their trade organization, the RIAA, is spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get legislation to keep the world just the way it is. In the long run, of course, they’ll fail. You can’t keep the world the way it is, even if you buy the influence of Congress.
    The lesson of the Cow is worth repeating: Safe is risky.
    What tactics does your firm use that