The Best in the World imperative

Ultimately, The Dip is a marketing book, because the thesis is that being seen as best in the world, whatever 'best' and whatever 'world' means, is the single greatest contributor to success in marketing. There are three reasons why this is more important than ever:

SELECTION: Getting into Harvard or being crowned Miss America are valuable achievements for just one reason: they make it easy for everyone to see you won. Someone adds value by performing a selection process, and the lucky ones who get picked, the anointed, win. The marketplace values this because we're too busy to do the selecting ourselves.

ACCESS: Because of the web, we don't have to limit our choices to the Yellow Pages or who's nearby or who was recommended by a friend. As a result, with far more choices, we can pick the very best choice, not the most convenient one.

PYRAMIDS: Many systems only work when there are a lot of entries but just a few winners. Whether it's the US Open or the economics of the local gym, it's the effort and expense of the non-winners that supports the benefits of the winners. These pyramids are getting more common because of the winner-take-all nature of our world. Digg wouldn't work if there were only a few stories a day submitted. It's the stories that don't make the front page that make the front page winners succeed.