Surrounded by Geniuses But Still Finding Your Own Path

Seth Godin is now recommending this book Surrounded by Geniuses.

In a world that constantly rewards new and better ideas, we must all find ways to consistently deliver greater value to the customers and stakeholders we choose to serve. And we can only do this by unlocking the everyday genius in ourselves, our co-workers and partners and the places we call home for the majority of our waking hours. It sounds like a very tall order. But it's hardly impossible. In fact, our work with leading organizations in many industries over the past 20 years has shown that all of us have the ability-under the right circumstances-to make a real difference in small and large ways.

The book takes the "wisdom of the crowd" concept and pulls it back to your own particular crowd and how to nurture that.

The book was also previously recommended by Business Pundit in a review from September which can be found in Innovation, Insights, Integrity.

The idea behind Insights to Innovation is based on the often used concept within this weblog of serendipity, offering a place of discovery for anybody interested to browse through. There are actually less than 100 items. The crowd that goes through it will each find hopefully something of interest but each find will be, again hopefully, something unique. How do those components come back together into a new whole?

The fact that many users want only what they are specifically looking without regard for the message or branding of the creator raises the component concept considered by Seth Godin or as he put it, "The world just got unbundled".

"Not only are there literally a million ways to discover you and your offerings, but rarely people hear your story the way you want it to be heard. The idea of a home page and a site map and a considered, well-lit entryway to your brand is quaint but unrealistic."

That's why supposedly there are tags. Components can be identified separately and put back together in forms more fitting to the user. The question is how to combine the two "home page" branding and "tagging" user-made so that it is easy to jump from one to the other. Seth's blog post dealt with the challenge "componentization" will have for marketers. The term "componentization" can obviously be expanded beyond Seth's use of the term applying not only to software but to hardware, business practices and people. I am of the opinion that it could also limit our ability for new discovery and greatly limit our potential for personal and communal paradigm shifts if we limit ourselves to only those components that fit comfortably in our already pre-set paradigms.