The Power of Dumb Ideas: The solution to marketing’s current ills is not more creativity. It’s less.

[30 September 2005 - strategy+business - Booz Allen Hamilton] Forget what the advertising gurus say about big ideas and differentiation. The solution to marketing's ills is not more creativity, it's less. A study of 1,300 U.S. companies by Chuck Lucier, senior vice president emeritus at Booz Allen Hamilton, reveals that only four broad ideas, copied again and again across sectors, accounted for 80 percent of the breakout businesses created between 1985 and 1995: power retailing, megabranding, focus/simplify/standardize, and the value chain bypass. The big idea doesn't have to be brand new. In a world overwhelmed by complexity, it's the context that gives dumb ideas their power to galvanize a team, create faith, and build the world's greatest marketing department. More