Guy Kawasaki delivers a short video advising startups to welcome and learn from unintended customer uses of their products rather than seeing them as a problem. He invokes Mao's phrase "let a hundred flowers blossom," recommends "declare victory" when unexpected adoption occurs, and cites the Macintosh being repurposed for desktop publishing as a positive example.
Chapters
Chairman Mao had a saying let a hundred flowers blossom. Not clear to me how he ever implemented that. However, let a hundred flowers blossom means that at the start of a company you think you know exactly who's going to use the product and how they're going to use it. And you may see a very interesting phenomenon that unintended customers use your product in unintended ways. Many companies startup, established companies, they freak out, my God, the wrong people are using our products in large quantities. That's the wrong attitude when that happens, declare victory. Hallelujah. People are using our product or service That's a great development. Find out why they're using it. Give them more reasons. Don't be proud. Apple thought it had a spreadsheet database and web processing computer called Macintosh. Nobody used it for that. People used it for desktop publishing. Hallelujah. Let a hundred flowers blossom. Declare victory. Let a hundred flowers blossom. Now you think that video will be bad for China? When I make my wow. Sa.