The Awesomeness Manifesto
With some radical ideas and ways of looking at business, Umair Haque has been a chief provoker and instigator in these times of stress. His writing on HBR blogs has an army of followers and is much discussed by people interested in the 21st century economy. Here he goes forth on a rant about the future and how successful companies will need to be awesome. The four pillars of the manifesto? Ethical Production. Starbucks, he says, is shifting to Fair Trade coffee beans, for example. Why? Starbucks isn’t just trying to innovate yet another flavour of sugar-water; it’s trying to gain awesomeness. Create insanely great stuff. Awesome stuff evokes an emotive reaction because it’s fundamentally new, unexpected, and 1000x better. Love. You know what’s funny about walking into an Apple Store? The people working there care. They don’t just ‘work at the Apple store" — they love Apple. Thick Value. Thick value is real, meaningful, and sustainable. It happens by making people authentically better off — not merely by adding more bells and whistles that your boss might like, but what will cause customers to roll their eyes. Read the manifesto here. And don’t forget to scroll down into the comments section.
