Sunday, December 5, 2010

A classic lesson in reframing the discussion

Mitch Ditkoff shares this lesson from a distraught vodka distributor

"What can we combine with Vodka to give it a distinctive taste and color?" 

They came up with tomato juice and, voila, the Bloody Mary was born. Sales? Through the roof.
What most of us think of as an "innovation" is really just the elegant combination of two (or more) pre-existing elements resulting in the creation of a new, value-added product or service.