Product & Artist Management TED Talk

              For my Product & Artist Management class I was required to watch a TED Talk featuring the presenter Simon Sinek.  The topic of his presentation was a model that the successful companies use to garner and inspire customers.  He called it the Golden Circle, and the model featured three circles within each other and the words why, how and what.  Simon stated that most companies know what they do as a company and how they run themselves, but the successful companies are the ones who know why they do what they do.  Simon compared the circle to the brain, as most people think with their outer most brain, the neo-cortex, and can process the what, but those that are unique think with the inner most brain, the limbic brain, to find out the how and why.  For example, I think Marvel Studios fits this model due to how successful they have become.  What they sell is movies featuring character from Marvel comics.  How they sell the idea of good Marvel movies is combining all the characters into one cinematic universe, which comes the why.  Marvel made this cinematic universe because nothing like this has ever been done to this great length in movie history.  When comic book movies were starting to become popular, they were one-dimensional; they only featured one movie.  What Marvel Studios does in one movie could potentially affect another one set in the same universe.  That is why Marvel Studios is successful- they are doing groundbreaking things. 

            Simon also talked about the law of diffusion of innovation.  Based on spending habits of the population, he broke down the population into five levels- innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.  When the iPhone first came out, not many people bought it.  Since the early adopters believe in the iPhone, the bought it which caught the eyes of the early adopters, so on and so forth.  To examine this law, I will compare my last two purchases with it. The first purchase, FIFA 15, came out last September but I still paid full price for it, so because of that I believe I am a late majority for the product.  I bought the game because it was the newest version of the FIFA video game series.  I could have easily bought a later edition of the game but I wanted the newer version.  My second most recent purchase was Orlando City Soccer tickets.  The tickets I bought are for their third home game in their first season in the MLS, so I believe that makes me an early majority.  I buy tickets because 1.)  I believe in the team and 2.) I believe in supporting the home team.  Overall, Simon Sinek’s TED Talk was great and well worth the watch.

Link for the TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action