70/20/10 The New Rule of Marketing

This weekend, in preparation for a social media class, I read “What Sticks” by Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart. The concept that I latched onto  is that of 70/20/10. Spend 70% on what works, 20% on sustaining innovations, and the critical 10% on leading edge innovation.

The idea is that if you spend the majority of your time doing the things that you know to work then you will have a stable foundation upon which to take important even critical risks. These risks apply to developing new products and trying new marketing tactics, tools, or channels.

Innovation is key to growing any business and the desire to somewhat mitigate risk can be satisfied with this formula. Now I’m not saying that this is what you have to do, according to the book it is more of a suggestion to help alleviate stagnation. This was inspired by companies and people who are afraid of risk. Starting with a mere 10% of the unproven can certainly open a door for creativity, growth, and new successes.

Think about this “rule” today when you are looking at your workload for the week. What would happen if you started innovating 10% of the time? Or for a highly innovative person like me, what if you maintained 70% and could achieve greater stability?