In an era of wealthy baby boomers & tech-savvy millenials, it is important that tech companies and start-ups develop an effective team that can educate their consumers about new and innovative products. Engineers & software developers may believe that futuristic inventions such as Artificial Intelligence, green-tech, self-driving vehicles, etc., are brilliant enough to market themselves, but this is often not the case.
Humans are often caught in a kind of stasis between what is new and what is familiar, and that is why many companies advance incrementally, so that new products are not so innovative as to appear alien. Derek Thompson refers to the design principle known as MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) in his book Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction as a principle to consider when developing new products and hits that will resonate with the general public (as a product that is advanced yet familiar will not alienate consumers). If humans are averse to strange and innovative new products and ideas, then it becomes imperative for marketers & salespeople to reconcile people with these products and ideas.
In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and a major investor & entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, argues that companies should focus on invention & innovation, as opposed to the incremental growth principles of MAYA. Thiel argues that the total invention of new products and concepts, or the growth from zero to one, is better than minor tweaks and adjustments to existing concepts, which only results in a growth from 1 to n; companies (like Apple, Google, and Amazon) that capitalize on this inventive growth often achieve a monopoly, which results in profits that are relatively unmolested by competition. If companies then begin to dream up revolutionary new inventions, that had previously been barely imaginable, it will become even more imperative for marketers to educate the public on the benefits and selling points of these new inventions; for people often do not even know what they want, or what they like, until they are exposed to it and witness its merits.
Many people believe that all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and that new ideas and inventions are becoming harder to come by, and this results in a pessimistic and often hopeless view of the future of our planet. Marketers & salespeople must then become energetic optimists, as well as educators, so as to convince consumers that there is still hope, that we have not yet come to the end of history.
(Although these innovative companies do need marketers to market their products, we also need engineers and ethical inventors who can create these products and solve the problems our world currently faces.)
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