Why heretics create change

This week I want to talk about disruption.

I hate writing that word. It’s been co-opted into business jargon. You know, like when folks talk about developing cross-functional teams with agile methodology and flat hierarchy.

(Sentences like that are exactly why I quit my last job, the one right before Anya and I started Discosloth almost 4 years ago).

Being disruptive has become fashionable in tech, marketing, and the business world at large. The word’s become watered down, though. It used to mean let’s flip these tables over, and now it means let’s improve a process.

Turning industries on their heads is much more exciting.

I don’t think any industry is particularly sacrosanct. 

Except, apparently, recipe bloggers.

This week, I noticed a little furor developing within the micro-startup world. A pair of developers started a little service called Recipeasly.

You know how, when you’re looking for recipes online, you have to read through someone’s life story before you even get to the ingredients part?

You’ve got to read a thousand-word story about the author’s spring break trip to Barcelona where she glimpsed a dashing Spanish chef in the kitchen of a little cafe and was introduced to a spice she has since added to all of her tapas dishes, and later when she rescued a mangy old dog it turned out to be a purebred Spanish water dog previously owned by the prime minister of Andorra.

I just want to know how many cloves of garlic to mince.

That’s what Recipeasly was supposed to solve: stripping out all the fluff and displaying the essentials in an easy-to-read format.

I would love this service.

Apparently, however, it was disruptive enough that food bloggers across the world erupted in fury. How dare you simplify my 3,000 word essay on lasagna? How dare you make an easy-to-print version that saves 5 pages of paper? Those stories make the recipe better!

Over 1000 angry replies later, the developers announced they were taking the project down.

That’s not the way to be disruptive! I would love to get thousands of bloggers riled up just because I launched a new web app. It would make me double down on it. Clearly I'm doing something right.

Is the food blog world so sacrosanct that we can’t change it up?

Is there some Demigod of Culinary Storytelling that we must placate?

Is there an Archbishop of Narrative Cuisine who patrols the world of food bloggery?

It’s not like Recipeasly would have shut down food blogs. Don’t these folks own their own blog? There is an audience who loves reading stories about Janine’s quaint family trip to a cabin in the Smokies where she discovered this sumptuous Appalachian Beef Chili recipe good for families of all sizes. They’ll still have a life story audience.

It's sort of like reality TV, except it's a parmesan chicken recipe.

I just want to know how many onions to chop.

===============
Heretics create change.

Whether it’s Galileo insisting that we actually orbit the sun, or Martin Luther insisting that we don’t need to pay the Pope cash in order to be forgiven, or Leif Ericsson insisting that there is land beyond the horizon, or Thoreau insisting that violent force is wrong, or Solzhenitsyn insisting that perhaps Stalinism isn't the best manifestation of Marxism — all of these heretics wrought lasting change, and left the world a better place.

I don’t think any of us who fiddle around on the internet will ever be in Thoreau’s orbit, but so many of us don’t even have the cajoles to disrupt our own little industries.

If you aren’t pushing the boundaries, nothing’s going to change.

Own a business? Push the limit to how much you can charge. Or undercut everyone else. Offer so much more than your competitors. Whatever! 

Marketing a product? Make your offering impossible to compete with. Use branding that no one else would dare. 

Writing a book? Write things you believe in, even if they risk ostracizing yourself.

Building your personal brand? Stop filtering your messaging to what you think people want to hear. 

Creating an app to simplify recipes? Just do it. If it negatively affects a food blogger’s traffic, maybe they’ll start simplifying their own recipes, and by pushing boundaries you’ll have enacted change.

You can't try to disrupt, and then get cold feet the instant they push back.