Overview
Don’t consider yourself deviant? Well, that just may be a career breaker. Odds are the idea or product that will transform your business or industry tomorrow is out there right now, hiding in the shadows of the Fringe, raw, messy, untamed, and just waiting to be exploited. Trapping, taming, and marketing it is the key to burying your competition and staying ahead of your market.Deviance is nothing more than a marked separation from the norm and is the source of innovation, the kind of breakthrough thinking that creates new markets and tumbles traditional ones. Positive deviation is an inexhaustible font of new ideas, products, and services. It’s the source of all creative thinking and dynamic new market development and ultimately the basis of all incremental profit.
The Deviant’s Advantage describes how deviance proceeds along a traceable trajectory from the Fringe, where it originates but has zero commercial potential; to the Edge, where word of mouth creates a limited audience; to the Realm of the Cool, where the buzz and market momentum really start to build; to the Next Big Thing, where demand is honed and intensifies; finally landing at Social Convention, the heart of the mass market.
Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker, two of America’s most respected futurists, trace the “Path of the Devox” (the voice, spirit, or incarnation of deviant ideas, products, and individuals), using it as a way to explain how and why:
* Christian fundamentalism morphed from college Bible studies to Republican party king-making
* Reebok cares more about what’s on the feet of kids in Detroit and Philadelphia than what theso-hip-it-hurts set is wearing in New York or on Rodeo Drive
* Napster exploded from an idea germinating inside a sixteen-year-old to a movement with 60 million subscribers that very nearly destroyed the music industry
* Hugh Hefner went from America’s most public pornographer to a cultural icon with decidedly Puritan sensibilities
Mathews and Wacker also look at what happens to formerly deviant products and ideas after they are replaced by the next wave from the Fringe—how they morph into Cliché (where their commercial potential may actually increase), become Icons or even Archetypes, or fade into Oblivion, and how you can profitably manage even a fading concept.
Looking for the next big idea for your business? Then it’s past time to quit staring at the Social Convention for inspiration and start scouring the Fringes of society. Tomorrow’s breakthrough concept is lurking out there right now, in the mind of a deviant individual. Your choice is simple: find it and exploit it, or be buried by those who do.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewWant the inside track on the next hot trend? Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker provide an original and rigorous analysis of big breakthroughs that -- whether in fashion, food, music, or science -- always seem to start at society's fringes. Mathews and Wacker hypothesize that a predictable process guides wild-and-crazy ideas, such as holistic medicine, Las Vegas, Post-it notes, and the Frisbee, from the fringe into the mainstream, where they can generate mass appeal -- and profits. They categorize this transformation into stages: Fringe, Edge, Realm of the Cool, Next Big Thing, and Social Convention. These may sound like glossy-magazine headlines, but upon closer inspection, they reveal the authors' keen and thoughtful analysis. Taking this trajectory a step further, the categories describe how trends can become clichés, icons, or archetypes -- or fade into oblivion. Mathews and Wacker liberally use terms of their own coinage, most frequently "devox" -- the voice of deviance. With an abundance of detailed examples, both contemporary and historical, they show that devox's influence permeates our "Post-Information Age," from sex to media to government. As the pace of change becomes ever faster, it's important to focus on the fringe, lest you'll lag behind. The Deviant's Advantage advises us to embrace contradictions and change, wildness and weirdness -- for what seems deviant today might become tomorrow's way of life. Luci Yamamoto
Publishers Weekly
Consultants (and "futurists") Mathews and Wacker present a book about cashing in on weird ideas. Defining deviance as "something or someone operating in a defined measure away from the norm," the authors examine the transformation that takes fringe ideas-such as jazz, holistic medicine, and even personal computing-into mass markets. They use examples such as Virgin mogul Richard Branson (whom they call a "poster boy" for deviance, because of his notion that everyday people should be able to have a lifestyle that would normally be closed to them) to show the process of taking a peripheral idea mainstream and applying it to one's business, even addressing the inevitable occurrence of the once-fringe idea becoming clichi. Although laden with trendy made-up words, e.g., "devox" and "prescreen," Mathews's and Wacker's intriguing book is a fun mix of business savvy and social commentary that will surely appeal to the Fast Company crowd. Agent, Rafe Sagalyn. (Sept. 17) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.Soundview Executive Book Summaries
From Fringe Ideas to Markets for the Masses"Deviant behavior" is a loaded term. In its negative form, it can be used to define the most unspeakable evil. In its positive form, it can represent the kind of transformational change that takes fringe ideas and turns them into mass markets. This positive deviant behavior is the subject of The Deviant's Advantage, and the authors write that deviance is the source of all innovation and the opportunity innovation presents.
Mathews and Wacker, two futurists from the trend-watching consulting firm FirstMatter, write that deviance is responsible for all the things that make life what it is: art, scientific breakthroughs, technological advances and physical evolution. They write that it is nothing more than a measurable distance from the norm and The Deviant's Advantage demonstrates how everything normal is touched by deviance and changed in some way, faster than imaginable.
The Deviant's Advantage also assumes that "changes in society drive changes in business, and that as society becomes more and more deviant, businesses in turn have to become more deviant to prosper, or even survive." The authors track the linear path that deviance follows from the time it springs from its creator's mind to the time it becomes an established social norm. This pattern is described as the movement from the Fringe, to the Edge, to the Realm of the Cool, to the Next Big Thing, and finally to Social Convention. From its morphed position as a Social Convention, deviance can then either become a Cliché, an Icon, an Archetype, or disappear into Oblivion. The authors write that, although not all deviance that starts on the Fringe will become a Social Convention, all Social Conventions began as Fringe thinking.
The Power of the Devox
Throughout The Deviant's Advantage, the authors use the term "devox" to describe the voice, spirit or incarnation of deviant ideas, products and individuals. They write that the products, markets and ideas that emerge in the wake of the devox are sometimes positive and sometimes negative. As examples of positive deviation, the authors cite the popularization of jazz, the mainstream acceptance of the value of a holistic approach to medicine, and even personal computing.
In The Deviant's Advantage, the authors use numerous examples to demonstrate the persistence of the devox, and provide a blueprint for identifying the essence of deviance, whether it appears in an idea, an individual, a product, a service, or an offering that blends all of these elements. Using this blueprint, they help others use the voice of deviance to create positive change in their organizations and their lives.
The authors explain that art, science, communication protocols and faith systems are all evolving at exponential rates - what is out on the Fringe today may become mainstream tomorrow. Managing the Edge requires a constant exposure to ideas and people that are foreign, uncomfortable and often hostile. Markets of increasing size arise as ideas move from the Fringe to Social Convention, and authenticity diminishes along the way. The authors explain that it is possible to take the vision of deviance they present and turn it into specific actions and a mind-set that can move a business forward.
It Starts with Social Change
By examining how the devox manifests itself in a variety of areas and exploring what these changes mean to business, the authors present a foundation for their belief that changes in business follow changes in society, and understanding what lies ahead for commerce is dependent on understanding social change.
The last part of The Deviant's Advantage describes many ways that businesses can use positive deviance to their advantage and offers a "Deviant's Toolbox" to help them profit from the business opportunities it offers. One tool is mining a deviant core. The authors describe this as the process of rigorously and objectively examining your business to identify core competencies and then finding new, deviantly creative ways to deploy them. Another tool is a formalized opposites analysis: Instead of focusing on its departure lounges, British Airways profited by putting attention into its arrivals lounge.
Why Soundview Likes This Book
The authors turn a provocative idea into sound business reasoning with an abundant collection of examples and anecdotes. By providing so many relevant examples of people and ideas that have risen from the Fringe to the mainstream, The Deviant's Advantage becomes the catalyst for new ideas about the future of business and culture that organizations will need to become prepared for what lies ahead. Copyright (c) 2003 Soundview Executive Book Summaries