It might be said (not by me, never by me) that while there must be an average nose in size or spread or even the ability to make scents of things, the object in the middle of my own face is at the longer or larger end of the available spectrum.
However, and whatever the length of your proboscis (or the style of your snout), and most certainly whatever the line of business you’re in, it’s worth remembering or recognizing what’s been called the long nose of innovation.
Bill Buxton, a Microsoft guy, wrote in 2008 -which is a thousand years ago now- about this idea of a long nose and what he said, simply put, is that innovation has never been all about the genius of sudden invention and that many breakthrough ideas we will be looking at as new and exciting in ten years from now (whenever you’re reading this) will owe a lot to things that were already known about ten years ago (whenever you’re reading this).
His most obvious example was the computer mouse, which by his reckoning took about thirty years to get from its invention into everyday use. His wider metaphor for this notion was that there’s a lot of work, and usually lots of different contributions along the way, between staking a claim to any given mine site and stacking up the polished gold bars (or cashing them in).
I like this for many reasons, but two especially: In everyday business where we’re not all inventing world-changing items, it still takes the contributions of many, and usually over a long period of time, to enjoy an overnight success. Secondly, while the pace of this digital age seems to be running faster than our feet can keep up with, the truth is there’s still time to build things, products or companies, that don’t happen overnight, but can last and reward us for a lot longer than that.
Before this long nose, I always liked the idea of the long tail. From a marketing perspective there’s not only something reassuring about it, but it also reminds you to think of an important metric of success being programs or products that continue, not just sudden flash-in-the-pan-gotta-have-
I like the long nose (as a concept) even more. Few of us are rock stars in our given worlds. Most play their part in some kind of choir, where there are many different voices adding to the whole. And if we’re sincerely singing the best we can, doing what we’re good at with our heart and lungs, then that’s as it should be.
All the best,