I recently posted a snide set of remarks on a hotselling iPhone application called iFart, which got me dunned for being juvenile myself.
So, in an effort to redeem myself, I post this interview, in which Etan Horowitz of the Orlando Sentinel interviews Joel Comm, developer of the iFart, on how the idea came to be.
Etan Horowitz: Why did you make it?
Joel Comm: As soon as Apple announced they would release a software development kit, we knew we had to develop iPhone applications. I knew this device would be the definitive handheld computer. I pulled my executive team to the conference room and we went to the whiteboard and started writing down all kinds of ideas. None of us can remember who came up with the idea of a fart machine, but we just cracked up when we thought about it and said ‘we have to develop this.’ That was it. A bunch of grown men allowing their inner 12-year-old to express themselves. We knew it would sell. (italics mine)
That is not just randomness. That is idea number 8, ‘think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, then plan to do them,’ in Robert I. Sutton’s “Weird Ideas That Work.”
Sutton’s book isn’t really about things that are weird. Instead, he has written a book to help companies organize themselves to explore new ways of doing business. Joel Comm and his team were taking a classic step to do something practical, and instead found themselves succeeding through the ridiculous (and in a sense, they were completely practical — lots of gadget lovers are men, and most men have a 12-year old boy dwelling somewhere inside them).
Sutton’s ideas might be a good thing to look at during the economic crisis. These are unconventional times, and his book aims at countering conventional business practices.
His ideas — there are, weirdly, 11 and a half of them — are as follows:
1. Hire ’slow learners’ (of the organizational code)
1.5. Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even who you dislike.
2. Hire people you (probably) don’t need
3. Use job interviews to get ideas, not to screen candidates
4. Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers.
5. Find some happy people and get them to fight.
6. Reward success and failure, punish inaction.
7. Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain.
8. Think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, and then plan to do them.
9. Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics and anyone who just wants to talk about money.
10. Don’t try to learn anyting from people working on the same problem.
11. Forget the past, especially your company’s successes.
While some of these sound completely unworkable, especially now, the book provides examples of how all have worked, as well as when they don’t. And Sutton acknowledges that these methods can be inefficient — sometimes the ideas don’t work, and people have to be let go, or projects killed.
A different take on how to be different in business is David Rendall’s Freak Management, which will be out in book form sometime soon.
What do you think, BNET? Is it time to get weird? Or time to hunker down?
