A couple of Fridays ago four or five of us were yucking it up around quitting time. Somebody said something which led to the theme from Underdog, which, of course, most of us knew. Why is it that we can remember all the words to songs from cartoons we watched as kids but we can’t remember birthdays and anniversaries?
I think the answer lies in how we store information. I think songs stick with us because we store the relationship between the notes rather than the notes themselves. The progression of notes makes up the song we remember. If I hum the first two notes of the theme from Star Wars I’ll bet good money you can take it from there. Before John Williams wrote that theme, those notes together probably would not have meant anything to you at all. But once you know them, you can extract the rest of the song from that little bit. Name That Tune built a whole game show around the concept.
Most birthdays and anniversaries, on the other hand, are disconnected—one day out of the year. A piece of data that goes with a person, like their middle name, that isn’t part of a progression. Some however, have a relationship to ours, so we remember it. I call my business partner’s son every year on his birthday, because it is the day before mine. It’s a progression that’s related, so it stays with me.
The only problem is jumping into the middle of the progression. The other night I played Songburst, a game where they give you the title of a song and a line from the song and you have to finish it. If it’s the beginning of a verse or a chorus, it’s easy. If it’s in the middle, you have to sing up to that point before you can start remembering the rest of the line. How many ring tones have you heard that start in the middle of the song (and isn’t it amazing that people will pay double for a few cheesy notes from a song than a CD quality version of the whole thing)? All the ones I’ve heard are at the beginning of the song or the chorus—the part you immediately recognize.
Innovations that stick work the same way. If your innovation relates to something that resonates with a customer, a pattern that they have or they realize they need, it’s a song. If you introduce it without a context or, as Clayton Christensen might say, not in their particular circumstance, your chances of them adopting it will be significantly less—it’s too hard to fit—you’re somewhere in the middle of the song rather than at the chorus. Innovations that pull patterns together, that make meaningful related connections, resonate with people and are adopted. It can even be an entirely new context for someone—a new song—but if they see how it fits, it can be successful.
It’s also important to be able to arrange new patterns to innovate. Song writers and composers use the same set of notes to write new songs. By combining them, along with rhythms, different instruments, and all the like, they create new patterns that resonate with us and stick. If you were around in the late 70’s you might remember the five notes that instantly conveyed Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As you read this you probably hummed them. Those notes have been around for centuries; now you associate them with a movie. Combining ideas, people, technology, and other base components result in innovations. Many innovations are just good ideas from one industry applied and adapted for another. Same song, different instruments or a different audience.
You can hear the same song sung by a rock band, played by an orchestra, tapped out on a xylophone, blasted from a bullhorn, screeched as a ring tone or cast in elevator music. Your kids can tap Jingle Bells with a stick and you’ll recognize it. The relationship of the notes is what sticks, not the details of what the notes actually are. By making the relationships between your idea, other ideas, things, and people work you’ll have a song rather than a collection of notes.
Time to go. I think I just missed someone’s birthday—but I know the tune.
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