What's Your 'WOW!' Idea?
What makes YOU unique? What makes YOU different? What's your WOW!? In this 18th issue we continue developing the 'ideastorming' alphabet of effective tips. techniques & tweaks for converting ideas into exciting and profitable revenue streams -?we focus on the letter W. This follows our 17th issue where we added the letter V to the 'ideastorm' alphabet: V - VISIONBOARD IT.
If you're new to us it is recommended that you read issue 1:?One Idea is All it Takes
About:?Trevor Nel is an 'ideas-generating machine' and co-founder of?WISDOMS?. You can connect with WISDOMS? and become: 1. a?PATRON?and/or; 2. a?PLAYER?, and/or; 3. a?PARTNER?- follow each link for more info.
So far our 'ideastorm' alphabet looks like this: A - ACTION IT; B - BUILD IT; C - COLOUR IT; D - DRAMA IT; E - EXPAND IT; F - FLIP IT; G - GOOGLE IT; H - HACK IT; I - INCORPORATE IT; J - JUMPSTART IT; K - KISS IT; L - LEVERAGE IT; M - MAGNIFY IT; N - NANOTECH IT; O - OPEN IT; P - PRODUCTIZE IT; Q - QUESTION IT; R - REWORK IT; S - STRIP IT; T - TWEAK IT; U - UNICORN IT; V - VISIONBOARD IT; ..now we add 1 more letter to the 'ideastorm' alphabet:
W - WOWFACTOR IT: defn. WOW: 'interj. Used to express wonder, amazement, or great pleasure. n. An outstanding success'.
If there is one word that encapsulates many, if not all, of the simple ideas explored in One Idea is All it Takes it has got to be.. WOW!
Everyone has expressed it at sometime. It might have been on a great day on top of Table Mountain, Cape Town; or a first visit to Disney World, Orlando; or being encircled by a giant herd of elephants in the Kruger Park, South Africa; witnessing the thundering Victoria Falls in flood; viewing Paris from the Eiffel Tower; completing the 7X craziest roller-coaster rides at Busch Gardens, Tampa Bay; accomplishing something you never thought you'd ever accomplish. That feeling of WOW.. a feeling of wonder & awe.. is what we need to build into whatever ideas we are working on.
George Berkowski, author of How To Build A Billion Dollar App puts it brilliantly here: 'The key is to have a disruptive idea. A disruptive idea is one that delivers a step change - an idea that is hard for an existing player to copy. The wow factor.. an idea, a product that wows its audience, is one that can rise to the top and truly stand out. People talk about wow, and people keep using something that wows them.'
People talk about wow, and people keep using something that wows them.
Perhaps, for me, the ultimate doyen of the principle of WOW has got to be Tom Peters - author of In Search of Excellence (1982) & The Pursuit Of WOW! (1994) summary here - two books that had a profound influence on my thinking in business. Tom continues to WOW with his excellent archive of business resources. See: tompeters! Manifestos; tompeters! Ebooks; and tompeters! Tom's Topics - Videos.
Fast Company ran some interesting articles on Tom Peters in the late '90s. In The Wow Project - Tom writes: '“Wow Projects”: projects that add value, projects that matter, projects that make a difference, projects that leave a legacy — and, yes, projects that make you a star.'
'Never let a project go dreary on you. Your goal should be to work in perpetuity with Wow people, on Wow Projects, for Wowable clients. How do you know when your project measures up? Each week, ask yourself and your teammates, “Will we be bragging about this project five years from now? If the odds of success are low, what can we do — right now! — to turn up the heat?” '
'No project is too mundane to become a Wow Project.'
'To a real life-in-the-projects person, everything is a golden learning opportunity. To Richard Branson, the passionate, daring, let’s-try-it-and-see-what-happens chairman and president of the Virgin Group, the whole world is full of projects waiting to be discovered.'
Peters gets it spot on correct when countering the 'we need money' brigade: 'One Trap to Avoid: getting too much money too soon. That’s the worst thing that can happen to a project. (Believe it.) Money will kill you on two counts. First, it takes the pressure off. Early in the life of every project, there’s no substitute for the scrounging mentality. If you don’t have enough money, you have to innovate your way around problems that you could otherwise simply buy your way out of. You have to work more closely with your users and your suppliers — and, as a result, they become part of the project from the beginning. You have to adopt the pirate’s mind-set: It’s us against them! We’re going to outthink, outhustle, outdream everybody — because we sure don’t have the money to outspend them. Second, if you take money early on, from internal or external sponsors, then early on you’ve got to listen to them. They just bought the right to sit at your table and to meddle in your life. And the last thing that a Wow Project needs is a money person setting the specifications for the project, deciding what’s worth investing more time and money in, and draining the passion from the project. To avoid the problem, live poor and dream big.'
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'Five Criteria for Judging Each Project: You can boil a project down to a simple list of five criteria: Wow! Beautiful! Revolutionary! Impact! Raving fans! (That last criteria comes courtesy of Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles’s book “Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service” [William Morrow, 1993].)'
A neat version of the above Fast Company article can be found here: The Wow Project
Right now, we too are working on our own WISDOMS? WOW Project - here is our copy that we are currently posting to LinkedIn - https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6927626629502353408/ :
We're looking for DifferenceMakers in every city on our planet. i.e. YOU. -?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/were-looking-differencemakers-every-city-our-planet-ie-you-/
Did you know that there are 43000 prominent cities (large, capitals etc.) amongst a comprehensive list of 4.3 million unique cities & towns from every country in the world.
WISDOMS??DifferenceMakers? is inviting YOU to become part of something BIG.. to participate in the establishment of POSITIVE DifferenceMakers? In Every City of The World. See:?https://lnkd.in/dyMHueFV
Everything BIG begins with a single small step! A simple COMMITMENT to make the first move toward a worthwhile objective.
WISDOMS??DifferenceMakers? is for EVERYBODY.. no matter how small a participation or contribution YOU wish to make.. or how big YOU see YOUR ambition or role for YOURSELF or YOUR ORGANISATION in the project.
At WISDOMS? we are constantly on the look-out for people and organizations who KNOW MORE and DO MORE than we do.. especially in the world of digital online skills. We are more than happy to share our resources to develop projects for mutual benefit. About our team at WISDOMS?:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/great-what-you-do-online-wisdoms-wants-collaborate-trevor-nel/?- Are You Great At What You Do Online? Let's Collaborate for Mutual-Benefit!
#businessunusual?#wisdoms?#attitude?#inspiration?#initiative?#leadership?#entrepreneurship?#businessmastery?#thedifferencemaker?
Remember..?just one idea is all it takes.
Next week:?issue 19 - We continue developing the 'ideastorming' alphabet of effective tips. techniques & tweaks for converting ideas into exciting and profitable revenue streams - we'll move on to the letter X.
Trevor Nel?is author of numerous publications & articles, including :