I had the privilege to attend a Seth Godin talk at the COCAbiz Spark conference last night. He said something that stuck with me enough to jot it down and put some thought to it. “Make art, not paintings” was an example he gave when talking about innovative ideas as compared to copycats. His example was a town in China that produces the most oil canvases in the world and sells copies of the Mona Lisa for $29.99. While it looks the same, it wasn’t art, it was just a painting – DaVinci made it art.
When you innovate and make the ‘first’ whatever you’re making art and you’re soon to have competition or copycats doing the same thing. Seth’s point was that you need to continually innovate and do something new/groundbreaking/scary to stay relevant and know. Another good example was Coca-Cola Japan. Every 3 weeks they create another drink flavor, doesn’t matter the taste or variety, whatever it is it goes out the door (example shown was a romaine lettuce flavored drink with orange food coloring).
Overall I enjoyed Seth’s presentation. He did a great job of telling stories with pictures and words throughout to help us (the audience) relate to what he was saying – Go make art.
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