In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. When Desiderius Erasmus wrote these words he really nailed the fact that your capabilities are always reflected towards your competition. To say it with other words: the best is always only as good as the next one following.
Never could he have imagined that Volvo was only “few centuries” later going to make an interesting viral ad playing with the idea of having a blind man designing a car. In this world of highly capable designers with their creme de la creme tools of the trade one could never have pictured this one coming. Right?
Actually Volvo has understood (or I want to think so) very well that to master something you need one quality more than anything else: deep intuition. Intuition that has been built through years and years of hard work, failures and successful learning. And all of this spiced up with love and passion towards what you do.
Albeit I love the ad it also describes very well the passionate approach of the blind man who has accepted his condition but still will never ask for any special conditions in any competition he is in. To really master marketing (or any other area) you need deep intuition with which you judge opportunities, ideas, people or anything for that matter. An intuition that will guide you between right and wrong always.
How to build such deep intuition? Unfortunately to most of us it is unobtainable, but those of you who are passionately interested in things you do, it is out there. So just start listening to the Boss and wish to be “blinded by the light”.
Tomi Grönfors is an entrepreneuer and self-made-marketing-man. He started his first business when he was 23 years. He has been working in sales, owned an AD agency, a marketing consulting company and is now an owner and CEO in VEEN Waters.
I agree, but also disagree – intuition is within us all and I don’t think it is obtainable only to few fortunate ones. I think the key is to listen – to stop and let it speak to you, and it will speak. It is of course another thing whether one follows it or not.
Nice one! Intuition, love and passion-all key elements in life (and marketing). I love the Boss!
True Eija,
Good point!
What I wanted to say is that I believe intuition is a deep understanding (of what ever art) that we posses when have taken the time to master something. Intuition is by therefore to us all to obtain, but for few really to be achieved. Because it really needs time and a lot of experiences to cumulate. So I agree it is for us all, but comes only to those who really want to work for it.
Tomi
Hmmm… Yes, well… i shall explain my view more, since my understanding of intuition is some what different to yours, and I find this topic very interesting. I don’t think intuition is something we accumulate by experience. What we do gain of experience is courage and confidence, that gives more courage to follow intuition. And that is something that only few will do. Intuition, however, is there all the time, we all have it. All the time.
Btw, I highly recommend the ‘Gut Feelings – Short cuts to better decision making’ by Gerd Gigerenzer.
Great! I have to check that book.
My understanding is based on the fact that I define (I think my view is commonly shared among psychologists at least on a non academic level) intuition as a subconscious reactions based on earlier experiences. I mean that although you do not know it you observe the world all the time and your experiences on earlier situations will create your intuition on a subconscious level. ie. if you come to the office (lets take working environment as the place) and get a feeling of things going good or bad.
How does that work? That is intuition that tells you how you should probably react to it. Your brain is progressing the data you take in: peoples expressions on their faces, are they picking up phones to call or answer, are the jolly people jolly or crying. All these signs are handled by your brain and without you noticing you have “a gut feeling” that I call intuition how you should react to the situation.
OK, I will admit that this is very broad generalisation and I do not take any responsibility on the academic merits of my definition on intuition. But yes, I really see it this way.
My name is Piter Jankovich. oOnly want to tell, that your blog is really cool
And want to ask you: is this blog your hobby?
P.S. Sorry for my bad english
Just a hobby although I work as a consultant sometimes and hence really fight with these problems on day to day basis.
On that issue I am more a novice than anything else. Just tried it by google search and ended up getting it work.
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This was a great blog entry. Please continue to post great content like this!