Here’s how you can solve any problem in your business by taking what someone has done before and remixing for yourself.

No matter what keeps you up at night about your business, whether you’re a big cheese CEO, aspiring entrepreneur or hard working sales rep, you all have something in common; someone else has already solved your problem for you.

Very little of genius is original. It’s usually a revamp of something that’s already around. Probably, the most topical example is from Steve Jobs, who all but stole the personal computer from Xerox.

 

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas” – Steve Jobs, 1996.  

How do you solve any problem in your business? It’s easy through remixing.

Malcolm Gladwell talks about the Creation Myth in an article that appeared in the New Yorker. He highlights how colossal success has been generated by remixing something that exists into something new (something that works for you).

Here’s how to start using remixing to solve any problem you have in your business.

  1. Identify your problem (i.e. the one that keeps you up at night). Write it down, draw it, do what ever but get it on paper. The more articulate you define the problem the easier it becomes to fix.
  2. Find at least 3 instances of the genius people / businesses who have solved your problem
  3. Remix your solution:
    1. Draw 3 columns on a piece of blank paper.
    2. Describe how the genius’s did it (“copy”)
    3. Make it applicable to your real problem (“transform”)
    4. Define exactly how you will use it (“combine”)

Dont’t reinvent; derive. Remember, new ideas evolve from the old and everything new is just a derivative.

This post was in itself is a remix of a really good series of short videos called Everything Is A Remix. It’s well worth taking the few minutes to watch them: