Blockbuster Blogs: How Breakthrough Ideas Are Born
It's 2004, and Chris Anderson , a media entrepreneur, is poring over sales data from online retailers. He notices something peculiar — these digital businesses are making significant profits from selling large numbers of niche products.
This observation led him to coin "The Long Tail," a concept that would change how we think about digital economics.
Anderson's journey from observation to breakthrough idea isn't unique. In fact, it's a pattern we see again and again when looking at the origins of many "blockbuster blogs" — those rare pieces of content that launch long-lasting ideas.
Breakthrough concepts often come from:
1. Direct experience: Paul Graham's "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" came from his own experience with flow-disrupting meetings.
2. Pattern recognition: Marc Andreessen's "Software is Eating the World" emerged from his observations of software disrupting and digitizing various traditional industries.
3. Framework creation: Stewart Butterfield 's "We Don't Sell Saddles Here" memo created a model for how Slack’s team should think about product positioning — and is still used more than a decade later.
4. Repurposing and amplification: Our blockbuster, "BLUF: The Military Standard That Can Make Your Writing More Powerful" by Jan-Erik Asplund , successfully applied a concept from one field to another.
But knowing where breakthrough ideas come from isn’t enough. They require hard work, constant refinement, excellent timing — and so much more.
The full article on the Animalz blog takes you on a journey filled with examples to show what it really takes to create a blockbuster blog:
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