Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas by John Butman

Author:John Butman [Butman, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781422172803
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2013-04-29T14:00:00+00:00

PUSHBACK

Chua’s adventure also makes the point that respiration can be negative as well as positive. It may often take the form of pushback, rebuttal, rejection, even ridicule and derision. The idea entrepreneur must accept that even these are forms of respiration—expressions created in response to expressions—and not ad hominem attacks that warrant revenge.

Indeed, the milder forms of pushback—satire, fun-poking, lampooning, and imitating—are a good indicator that your idea has connected with the zeitgeist and been embraced by the ideaplex. Appearing as a character on The Simpsons or South Park, getting skewered in the Onion, or being included in a list or gallery in the Daily Beast is a sign that your idea is being heard and considered, that it has respiration.

Mireille Guiliano has experienced relatively good-natured satire. There are many imitations and takeoffs of her books, including French Cats Don’t Get Fat by Henry Beard, Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle, and French Women Don’t Sleep Alone: Pleasurable Secrets to Finding Love by Jamie Cat Callan, both of which are actually rather earnest in their intent, and Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, by Simon Doonan. Guiliano received an e-mail from a friend saying that she should collect a royalty from authors who traded on her title and idea. Guiliano laughed. She was well aware that a lot of people had written books using the words French women or the phrase don’t get fat. She wrote to her friend, “Don’t worry. The more clones we have, the better it is.”

Indeed, satire and imitation are delightful forms of respiration that throw the original ideas into high relief: they bring out both the defenders and the questioners.

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