December 25, 2004
crowded markets
One of my favorite bits in “How To Be Creative” is Number 11:
Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.
Yeah, well, this is something I learned the hard way.
Working over the years with a host of different industries– advertising, TV, newspapers etc– you soon learn that there’s a lot of people who want to be doing the same thing you’re doing.
A lot of them would like nothing better than to take your job.
A lot of them are younger, sexier, smarter, cheaper, hungrier and more desperate than you are.
In plain economics, it’s hard to compete with these folk. And every year gets a little bit harder.
So the thing to do is avoid stuff a lot of other people are doing i.e avoid the stuff people already know about.
Young people leave college and head straight into “crowded markets”, simply because they’re inexperienced (Anything to do with advertising, TV, or newspapers is EXTREMELY crowded, for instance).
When you’re older, there’s less excuse.
[UPDATE:]
Andreas in the commmets points to a great article of his re. the same problem affecting MBA graduates. Too many sheep, not enough grass etc.
Basically, when 20,000 people have the same biz model as you, you are dead meat.
less excuse, but more excuze?
Apologies for alternative spelling.
I absolutely agree. And when everybody studies the same, we get the same strategies, the same products, the same advertisement, the same everything. Boring and grey. I wrote here (http://asiabusinessconsulting.blogspot.com/2004/02/mbas-bleak-future-why-art-graduates.html) that even McKinsey looks for different type of people. Is it possible to say that different types of studies produce different types of products, and more innovation or creativity? May be, in the future, MBAs become the entry ticket to universities, but than, what other subjects are you good at?
Nice post, Andreas, I read your article. Good one.
An MBA is no guarantee of how well you’re going to do in buisness. It’s a good indicator that you can do what you’re told, though, in unfavorable conditions.
And surely one needs a more original business model than “getting into a decent biz school”?
When 20,000 people have the same biz plan as you, you’re dead meat.
I have been wondering about why so many people choose the same losing strategy.
Some of it is because it was a winning strategy before so it will recover, right?
Some of it is lag-time, not realizing how long it takes to become good at something and they start just in time for it to be over.
Some of it is herd mentality, everyone is doing it so it must be good, even when that means the herd goes over a cliff. You might not want too but you are in too deep to change direction because everyone else around you is going the wrong way and they sweep you along too.
Some of it is not having a winning strategy to emulate.
And some of it is just not knowing the difference, and not caring anyway.
You need to have vision and you just can’t see very far in the middle of the herd. Wether predator or prey, the edge is where the action is.
You need to care for others and those who need the most caring are never in the deep of the herd.
The Universe cares more about the means than the ends of what you do. Be your best and the Universe will do its best for you, which is a whole lot.
Hugh Macleod making meaning
Hugh Macleod making meaning far more eloquently than I’ve been able to. His post, Crowded Markets is exactly why you need to be remarkable and why I’m writing my ChangeThis manifesto “Going All In: Why I learnt more from Late Night Poker than my MBA”…
Avoiding crowds
It’s been too long since I posted any Hugh Macleod, but