Often, it takes decades to pass this test - like it happened with cars vs horses and books vs scrolls. Like the examples I started the article with. In order to pass this, it needs to answer yes to the question - Is it extinguishing the alternate solution that exists today? This will lead to something beyond success - a paradigm shift. The final test is a test of dominance, ‘Extinguish’. #Embrace extend extinguish tv#A reel camera which doubles as a TV remote control extends its functionality, but doesn’t extend delivery on the core need, so will not be guaranteed success. But not that it needs to extend delivery on the core need. Once an idea manages to extend an existing alternative, then it is guaranteed to achieve success. They embraced the delivery on the core need (taking pictures) when compared to cameras before them and they extended that to enhance the delivery on the core need. But they managed to increase the number of pictures one could take by several orders of magnitude, they made it easier for people to share the photos they had taken, and when integrated with smartphones, they made it redundant for people to carry one additional device for taking pictures. If all digital cameras could do was take a limited number of photographs like the cameras that used reel, they wouldn’t have succeeded. In order to pass this, it needs to answer yes to the question - Is it extending a solution that already exists in the lives of the audience to deliver more on the core need? And this, is a sufficient condition for achieving success. Once an idea manages to embrace an existing alternate solution, once it passes the ‘Embrace’ test, the next test is to ‘Extend’. It is still not sufficient because there can be others that relate to the audience a lot more, have better timing and delivery, and so on. If a novel fails to entertain or if a standup act fails to evoke laughter, it fails to embrace what the existing novels and standup acts can do - and which is the core need that it solves for the audience. If a car is too expensive or too unreliable or too slow, then people will vote with their money for horses and the car will fail to take off. But just doing so, won’t guarantee success. A car stands no chance of beating the horse if it fails to take people from one place to another. A phone with a drive that can store a thousand pictures doesn’t stand a chance in competing with the camera if it cannot take pictures. And it passes if the answer is yes to the question - Is it embracing a solution that already exists in the lives of the audience? This is not a sufficient ingredient for becoming a success, but it is a necessary ingredient without which there will be no success.ĭigital cameras embraced the solution that existed before - they enabled people to take pictures. But every new idea has a singular path to success, that can be summed up in three words - Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.Īny new idea will first go through the ‘Embrace’ test. Working in the product industry and in the creative industries of writing and stand-up comedy is all about introducing new ideas to the audience. Horses as a mode of transportation, papyrus as a tool for capturing and preserving text, Shakespearean English as a mode of communication, have all been extinguished. Nobody writes or talks in Shakespearean English anymore. Nobody writes on papyrus scrolls anymore. Nobody uses horses to get around anymore.
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