When Ideas Compete, You Win. How small businesses can use braketology to make smart decisions.
By: Curt Conrad
President, BrightCite Inc.
Ideas, Vendors, Opportunities, Hiring… Small business is filled with decisions large and small. We make most of those decisions by comparing pro’s and cons, risks and rewards, plus numerous other variables to determine the best.
It’s really about competition – survival of the fittest. Our options compete and what we feel is the best solution wins the decision and survives.
A Powerful Business Tool For Making Decisions
There is a simple, powerful tool that distills logic, weeds out the weak options and narrows a field of contenders to a best choice.
It allows you to harness the collective intelligence of others on your behalf. And you are probably familiar with this powerful tool and it’s elegant, simple solution – The Bracket.
Sure you’ve seen them used to measure the results and winners of sporting events and college basketball. But have you applied their power to your business?
Slate – offers an interesting application of brackets based on what authors Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir call Braketology the title of their book. According to the Slate essay:
Bracketology—the practice of parsing people, places, and things into discrete one-on-one matchups to determine which of the two is superior or preferable—works because it is simple. It is a system that helps us make clearer and cleaner decisions about what is good, better, best in our world. What could be simpler than breaking down a choice into either/or, black or white, this one or that one?
Apply The Power For Yourself
Let’s say you are looking for a new Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your business. You write down numerous tag-line ideas, looking for the ultimate slogan. You arrange your list in brackets and have potential slogans compete with each other. Round after round you narrow the group, harnessing the collective brainpower of your company and customers, who choose their favorites. Ultimately, one tag-line is left standing – the best decision has been made.
See It In Action
Slate has set up Ad Slogans bracket competition to determine the best slogans of all time. Check it out and you’ll not only get some great marketing inspiration for your company – you might just discover a way to solve that business problem that’s been holding you back.
May the best solution win!