NYC Isn't Dead, It Just Smells Funny (because it's August)

Hats off to James Altucher, who has really mastered the pundit equation of "outrageous prediction X catchy headline = maximum attention”. In Dec 2017, when bitcoin was at 10K, Altucher said it would go to $1M by 2020 (I guess there are are still 4 months left for it to 100X).

This month, he has done it again with a “NYC Is Dead Forever” LinkedIn article that was widely shared and read.

The only thing worse than being talked about it not being talked about.

Oscar Wilde

So Mr. Altucher must be thrilled that Danielle Weisberg parodied him in McSweeney’s and even Jerry Seinfeld weighed in this week with a gently mocking rebuttal in the New York Times. If you can get Jerry to bite and namecheck your brand, you're a good marketer. So again, hats off on style, but what about substance?

So... is NYC really falling apart or just smelling a bit ripe, like it always does in hot and humid August?

Many commenters have pointed out that NYC has been through bad stuff before. It experienced nearly total fiscal collapse in the 1970s, record crime in the 1980s, an existential terrorism crisis with 9/11 and a severe economic slump in 2008, and yet it always bounced back stronger. Does that mean the prospects for the city's commercial real estate owners or restauranteurs are rosy in the medium term? Probably not.

But is this time really completely different? History would disagree. It is worth remembering that what makes NYC great is its in-person convening power to bring together some of the worlds most creative and ambitious people. The magical serendipity it creates births all kinds of innovation:

“I suppose that is the thing about New York,”

Dorothy Parker wrote in 1928.

“It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day.”

And if you read Langston Hughes or E B White or Pete Hamill describing the NYC of a hundred or fifty years ago, you realize that that city is long gone and yet some of the same spirit is still very much alive as it keeps reinventing itself. This is beautifully articulated in a NYT reader comment in response to the Jerry Seinfeld piece:

Where does innovation really come from?

Disruptive events always spark innovation, but people tend to focus too much on knee-jerk responses to what has changed when trying to innovate. Instead it's worth considering this quote, which is a favorite among the B2B Institute team:

I very frequently get the question: "What's going to change in the next 10 years?" And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: "What's not going to change in the next 10 years?" And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.

Jeff Bezos

My significantly less attention-grabbing prediction is that the people who are going to create outsized innovation coming from this crisis (in NYC and everywhere else) will do so by finding the small openings created by the sudden step change and combining that with profound insights about what has always been true and will continue to be true.

Case in point, UBER didn't start because people radically changed their behavior. It started because the iPhone suddenly allowed everyone to have reliable enough mapping technology in their pocket (small innovation opening) and because people always hated the uncertainty of waiting for cabs to arrive and fumbling for payment at the end of the journey (true and will continue to be true).

Content Recommendations

• The new must-read newsletter for smart marketers (apart from this one, which you already have read nearly to the end, so well done and thanks!) is Callie Schweitzer's aptly titled Marketers Must Read.
• Our research with Rory Sutherland on B2B's obsession with rationality is something I wrote about previously, and it's worth checking out the webinar recording to see Rory work his magic.
• Our partner Fran Cassidy's report on Marketing to the CFO was praised by The Drum as the most important B2B research this year so far.
• Please also check out our recent CFO-focused webinar with Fran and my friends Ty Heath, Frank Cooper and Rob Norman.
• If you are in love with Rory Sutherland and can't get enough, him sparring with Paul McIntyre in this Mi3 podcast will surely delight you.
• My amazing colleague Billy Sountornsorn wrote a moving personal reflection on belonging in the workplace that deservedly got a lot of attention.