What do Arianna Huffington, Jay-Z and the founders of Twitter all have in common?
They changed the face of American culture forever.
They have enabled us to "see ourselves, or something in the world, differently," explains author Grant McCracken. In his book "Culturematic," McCracken discusses how these and other innovators came up with revolutionary concepts that helped shape the way we see the world today.
McCracken describes "culturematic" as "a little machine for making culture. It's an ingenuity engine." The cultural innovators practicing this art form all get one key thing right: They challenged the traditional order in which our world is run. "They speak to us because they go against the grain of expectation," McCracken shares.
We chose 16 of the most valuable secrets from their successes.
Twitter Founders: Don't do it for others, do it for yourself
"In the early days, the founders of Twitter — Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams — thought Twitter might appeal to 'technical geeks' in San Francisco, who would use it 'to fool around with and to find out what each other's up to.' ... At this early stage they were driven by personal passion. So it didn't especially bother them that, as Stone recalls, ''for the first nine months or so everyone just thought we were fools [and that Twitter] was the most ridiculous thing they'd ever heard of...' First we make the tech, then the tech makes up."
Source: Culturematic
Jay-Z: Always be versatile and willing to reinvent yourself
"Many hip-hop artists are unabashedly in it for the money. Some of the point of the exercise is, in the words of 50 Cent, 'to get rich [or] die trying.' In 1998 Jay-Z released Vol.2: Hard Knock Life, [which] went to the top of the charts. ...The song in question, 'Hard Knock Life' attracted immediate attention for its use of a refrain from the Broadway musical 'Annie.' This looked like a deliberate effort to make Jay-Z look less threatening and more accessible, less gangsta more pop. ... His choice was, in the words of one critic, 'completely unexpected.'"
Source: Culturematic
Andy Samberg: Don't ask your boss for permission
"When Andy Samberg joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, he found his own way to make a contribution." Without asking his boss for permission, Samberg borrowed a camera from a friend, made a short film and handed the tape to his producer at Saturday Night Live. Now, "Samberg is one of the new producing wells in popular culture. ...The YouTube views generated by SNL digital Shorts run into the hundreds of millions."
Source: Culturematic
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