How do you balance unique ideas, products and services with the need to make them acceptable to large communities?
A significant tension exists.
You have to walk the line and promote the different while currying favor amongst communities with accepted norms. Some see this tense courtship as balancing differentiation and commoditization.
A classic mistake would be for a content creator or innovator to scorn the mass and groupthink, in spite of their flaws. If an idea generator or company wants to be anything more than a niche player, the opposite needs to occur. They need to cultivate influence and acceptance from others so their idea, product and/or service gains market share.
Groups by their very nature avoid new concepts in favor of safer ones. Every successful business and talent balances uniqueness and commonality.
Working the idea, product or service up an adoption curve demands significant commitment. It can take years to make an offering successful.
Early adopters need to be cultivated. Feedback loops created. Concerns addressed.
If a product does well it may reach the early majority phase of adoption (see Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory) where the mass market begins to embrace it. We saw this earlier in the year with Pinterest and Instagram.
Conversely, many, many great products and ideas never achieve mass market attention. And that’s because they cannot successfully cross the line of commonly accepted norms.
Then we see bad products make it. I think Google+ in its first incarnation was an example of this, and though people debate Google+’s sticky factor, the company leveraged all of its assets to make Google+ a product that we must contend with moving forward, even if only for search purposes.
Those that want success must walk the line.
What do you think about balancing uniqueness and mass acceptance?