The Good Idea in the Bad Idea

Not long ago, there appeared in the chronicles of the regular world news an unpretentious item different from the others. It dealt with breakthrough news about weeds. Weeds are bad. What is good about them? Nothing. What is the worst thing about weeds? Their fast growth rate can destroy the entire garden.

Using genetic engineering, scientists isolated the gene for fast growth and implanted it in certain crops. The immediate result was a sharp rise in producing the “positive” crops by hundreds of percents. Thus, instead of uprooting the “weeds” – ideologically and practically as one — the revolutionary idea of “The good idea which is in the bad idea” was established, and the innovation brought with it rich yields that were not at anyone’s expense and were for the good of everyone.

In a world where all knowledge has been “cracked,” and everyone plays chess with themselves, where the same marketing methods that were learned at the same universities have been adopted, the new struggle is a struggle of ideas that has been transformed into the most expensive product in the world.

Systematic creative thinking enables the enrichment of ideas in a proven manner, and therefore, there is a possibility of learning and implementing them into everyone’s heart. Everyone can be more creative than before if equipped with the appropriate tools. The “nerd” will become less nerdy, and the “creative” one will also become more creative than he was.

The marketing world, which connects sellers to buyers regularly, necessitates fresh, unknown, surprising and effective strategies — exactly like the basic characteristics of systematic creative thinking. The story brought at the beginning of the article expresses the “Judo” method in creative thinking — whereby the main idea is to use the strength of the problem to solve the problem.

For an example. “The 1970 Volkswagen will stay ugly for a long time.” The manufacturer used ugliness to express the car’s trustworthiness over time. In the ad, ‘Joy – the most expensive perfume in the world,” instead of an apology regarding the high costs of the product, the high cost is turned into a guarantee of quality and a reason for pride.

More than once, a good idea (a wild rose) has grown out of a bed of thorns (bad ideas). It is of greater quality and more remarkable than the cultured roses of expected and known ideas. One can look at a hacker as a criminal but still wish to hire his services as an expert in information security. The polio germ is scary as it causes a cruel disease, but the weakened polio germ is also a cure for the disease.

The turning of a disadvantage into an advantage has been used many times. The deaf have been mobilized to read the lips of leaders in hostile countries, and the color blind have been enlisted to figure out the shades of gray in air photos to see the difference between real structures and fake ones, as was done in World War II.

According to the Judo method, one can create a “malfunction” to initiate a disadvantage, which can later be turned into an advantage. For example, one can create a deliberate shortage to increase the value of the rare product. Advertising and public relations companies use well-known techniques such as pictures of long lines of buyers and spreading rumors about the scarcity of a product to increase the demand for their products.

The Judo method also enables solutions in crises, such as a company with a problem on its assembly line or a company with a low self-image. An example of this was a soap company in the United States with a problem on its assembly line – air bubbles had penetrated the soap and remained in the bar of soap. Consumer organizations were called in. “You are selling air bubbles instead of soap!,” they accused. The company could have apologized, begun a public relations campaign, and made community donations.

Surprisingly, instead, it raised the price of the soap and announced a new development – the discovery of a soap that floats. The soap with the air bubbles was marketed as the solution to the problem of the slippery soap that often falls and sinks to the bottom of the bathtub. A failure was transformed into a great business success.

Creative thinking is not better than regular thinking, but it enables alternatives when all the other possibilities have been exhausted. Although creative thinking was originally discovered in the province of the psychiatrists — the idea is” crazy,” and the inventor is“nuts.” In reality, systematic creative thinking is part of additional logic in our brains: It is not a vacant look at the past with the hope of divine inspiration, which may or may not come, but practical results that can be measured and relevant.

Creative thinking teaches us to turn a disadvantage into an advantage and to solve problems through the problematical elements of the problem. In a rabbi’s answer to his student, “Your question enables one to say that the answer is already hidden inside your question.” One just needs to know how to leverage it and use the question as a way to an answer.

The creative competition is not against Picasso or Leonardo De Vinci; the competition is within us. In a competition between a man and himself, there is only one winner: the man himself. That is the whole purpose of creative thinking. Through a magic trick, a game, thought provocation, humor and the thought process of children who test reality without any preconceived notions or automatic assumptions, we wish to reach a serious output, quality with quantity, which contributes to your income, to your heart, your brain, to an organization and an individual as one.

The marketing behind it, new strategic marketing, is an unconventional weapon to achieve a relative advantage in the difficult battle for the customer’s heart.