STREET DOGS

From The John Mauldin Classics Collection:

It is said that in every crisis lies an opportunity and the deeper the crisis, the better the opportunity. The big question, of course, is how to recognise it?

In The Deviant’s Advantage, authors Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker argue that you can predict the future (and thereby enjoy explosive, exponential success) by recognising a pattern that has characterised most major changes. This pattern starts on the fringe and moves gradually towards the centre of social convention. The trend from fringe to mainstream has four stages. The outer rim is the stage in which individual innovators come up with weird, off-the-wall, antisocial ideas. Most of these ideas die on their own accord. A few are taken up by limited audiences of believers.

This is the second stage, the Edge. To society at large, ideas at the Edge seem odd, even freaky. But to the true believers, they are sacred. Most Edge ideas stay at the Edge, but some develop a wider base of followers. They then move into the Realm of the Cool. At that stage, the ideas that were once vilified by the press are now given credence as interesting abnormalities. The mainstream media still don’t like them, but the offbeat press is positive.

Every so often, something that is in the Realm of the Cool catches fire. Suddenly, it becomes The Next Big Thing. Major media talk about it. Influential people consume it. The Next Big Thing becomes an icon for marketers. They let the mainstream buying public know it’s cool. There is then, of course, a mad rush to buy it. The demand is so high that specialty manufacturers can no longer keep up with the demand. This is the stage at which Fortune 500 companies buy up the product and put it on shelves at Wal-Mart or on the menu at McDonald’s.