The Deviant's Advantage: How to Use Fringe Ideas to Create Mass Markets

I'm not going to go into too much detail but I will say this is a great book if you have young creatives working in your company (mine is advertising) who need to understand that it is their bizarre/unorthodox way of seeing the world that got them where they are. Is there a better book that tells someone that being crazy equals profits? In defence of an earlier comment, I don't think anyone should be intimidated by a self-invented word like "devox." Heck the Simpson's book... the one with the big donut had 84 words that forced me to open my dictionary! Watts Wacker et. al. are the thinking man's Faith Popcorn. Faith will give you a fish but Deviant's Advantage will teach you to fish. (Which, quite often, is what invention and creativity are about.)

The Deviant's Advantage-Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker What I love about this book is that while it makes a strong case for the importance of deviant thinking in the world of business, it simultaneously explains why so little exists there, and how unlikely it is to ever appear in great abundance. It's just not the way most of the people in the corporate world have been conditioned to behave. Despite all the exhortations to "think out of the box", the vast majority of executives are simply out of their element anywhere else but inside one. However, as the authors deconstruct the emergence of new and valuable ideas, those things destined to become the next "new" thing, they offers many pointers on how to identify these developing trends before they become mainstream. In so doing, they also coin an especially inelegant term for the originators of these ideas, the "devox" is what they call them. But this is a minor blemish on what is otherwise a truly important book. At the end of the day, what the authors argue brilliantly and illustrate repeatedly is that businesses that embrace risk may be far safer than those that avoid it.

I haven't even finished the book and i can't disagree more with the reviews people have written here. My question is, should it really have been marketed as a "business" book. I would classify it as a book worthy required reading for an American Studies course. It fits in with the idea of "the other", people who had "deviant" ideas and thru their actions propelled society to move ahead. These deviances then become the so called "norm". They move society/culture whether it be "pop culture" or products. Hmmm? does America have "culture" other than "pop culture" which is so tied in with consumerism. I think this book is more for the creative thinkers/artists etc. than for business people or people who want to "cash in" on an idea. This book is for people who as kids did NOT color within the lines. I found out about the book thru a radio show interview that was so interesting. This is the type of book that you don't read in one sitting. It is not a "get rich" quick book. duh!!! This is a book where you can read one concept/idea they have pushed forth and you put the book down and "THINK" about it. I think it is brilliant.

Mathews and Wacker explain that, by definition, "deviant" and "deviance" refer to "someone or something operating in a defined measure away from the norm....[therefore] everything that is different is deviant." They go on to observe that positive deviance can be a "force for transformation" whereas negative deviance can be a "source of unspeakable evil." In the context of this volume, deviance "irrigates the imagination; offers an inexhaustible font of new ideas, products, and services; and in the end, is the source of all innovation, new market creation, and, for business, ultimately represents the basis of all incremental profit. Deviance equals innovation and innovation equals opportunity. Opportunity creates markets that in turn are destroyed by deviance." Mathews and Wacker assert that deviance follows a linear pattern: Fringe > Edge > Realm of the Cool > Next Big Thing > Social Convention > Cliché > Icon or Archetype or Oblivion. <p>In other words, what began "operating in a defined measure away from the norm" eventually becomes the norm and thus vulnerable to something else "operating in a defined measure away from the norm" which eventually....You get the idea. Mathews and Wacker describe the voice, spirit, or incarnation of deviance with a neologism, the devox. Used as a metaphor, the devox illustrates that "things have changed -- and continue to change -- at such a rate that conventional language is no longer an effective tool for describing what's going on around around us." Nor can then conventional language describe what has yet to occur. "Remember the first rule of the devox: Nothing's more foolish than conventional wisdom."<p>Of the ten themes which Mathews and Wacker examine (see pages 10-12), for me the most powerful is what they characterize as "the Abolition of Context" which occurs when Social Convention has eroded to the point at which it loses its authority to define reality for the society it theoretically describes. As context is abolished, the challenge is to build a new culture "and this demands a whole new set of plans and equipment. We need new language to communicate what we're about. We need to get beyond the wisdom of the ages and learn how to embrace the wisdom of the moment. We need to toss out the standards and design new standards." In this context, Mathews and Wacker do not limit their attention to the business world; rather, to the entire global culture within which business is conducted throughout the world. They insist that "real diversity" is all about ideas, perspectives, and sometimes good old fashioned weirdness, not race, age or gender." Deviance will abolish context with or without our permission. "The endgame is that there is no endgame. The goal is permanent transformation, not one-time self-definition."<p>Mathews and Wacker conclude their book with a brief but insightful analysis of what they call "the public faces of deviance": the Trickster, the Clown, the Wizard or Magician, the Shaman, the Seer,

Mathews and Wacker have presented a business book that is hard to put down. Inventive and humorous, creative and whimsical; sound business advice and dreams of the future are all presented in a pleasurable reading style that makes you want to continue reading to the end. If the American car companies read more books like this; perhaps we would see more companies restructuring themselves with astounding new products instead of layoffs and revised mission statements.