Idea management, Personal Branding, Innovation, Orange Academy, Kenny Badmus, Kenny Brandmuse

1. 5 LESSONS A MOUSE CAN TEACH
YOU IN IDEA MANAGEMENT
KENNY BADMUS

2. 5 LESSONS A MOUSE CAN
TEACH YOU IN IDEA
MANAGEMENT
Kenny Badmus
–
The Chief Imagination Officer of Orange
Academy, Africa’s 1st practical school of Brand
Experience and Idea Management
www.cluborangeng.com

3. IF YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW
TO MANAGE YOUR IDEA, GO
LEARN FROM THE MOUSE

4. I caught a mouse in my trap last
night and it begged me for a minute
or two before throwing it into the
trash. It wanted to teach me a
lesson of my life. Squeaking and
rolling its eyes in the pains of the
booby traps, the mouse needed to
leave me with 5 major lessons that
provoked me to write this piece.

5. LESSON 1. Mice know how to
invade new territories.
INVADE

6. If you ever wonder how a mouse
found its way into your well-locked
apartment, think again. These
creatures look for little cracks in the
walls and together, they burrow it
further bringing in their kin one at a
time. You are not ready for
business if you are not ready to drill
a hole in the competition's.

7. Case studies: Steve Job's Apple
drilled a hole in the IBM concept in
order to launch the Lisa in 1984.
Also in that same 1984, Richard
Branson took on the almighty BA by
bringing ‘Virginness’ into an industry
plagued by dullness.

8. Mice smell opportunities in distant
places and launch an offensive. If
you are coming into an industry
with the same convention of
offering, why would anyone do
business with you? You gotta leave
some hole in the walls so they can
notice you and literarily smell a rat

9. LESSON 2. Mice know how to
litter the place. They are very
fertile. CREATE

10. There is almost no other way to
build your personal branding
without producing what we can
see. And number matters here.
How many articles have you
written in your area of
expertise?

11. How many Blogs have you
contributed to? How many
papers have you submitted to
the local institutions in your city?
Every 4 week, a mouse is ready
to produce new litters.

12. You are laughing at the other
lady whose work is almost
everywhere online, right? Well,
you need to laugh at yourself.
Revolutionists write their
thoughts down..

13. They produce prototypes of their
works. They keep doing it. You are
as good as your last job four weeks
ago. Don’t tell us you have an idea
of how to change an industry.
Write it down. Post it online. That’s
littering.
.

14. LESSON 3. Mice can Infect your
precious little ones. Be
INFECTIOUS
.

15. When a mouse pee on it, you better
leave it. It's called the power of
infectiousness. Don't do things for
doing things sake. Leave them with
an infectious messaging or style. To
be infectious is to start something
that can go places. Online, you call it
viral. What's more viral than a
mouse?

16. Don't just update your Facebook
page, leave it with a poison.
Tweet with some infectious
words and see the world at your
doorstep.

17. Learn the power of infectious messaging.
Learn how to tell story that can be retold.
Check your area of influence on your
marketplace. Are you being infectious or you
are just a sweet little something that leaves
no bite. Pee on that industry and let people
smell it from afar. Don't strive to litter for
litter's sake. Make sure your works have a
bite to it.

18. Case study 2: The little Black dress by Coco
Channel was a revolution that has never left
womenfolk’s closets. Prior to 192O's, no one
would touch a black dress except they are
mourning. Coco tapped into the World War 1
fatalities and created a sexy dress women
could wear to just about anywhere. That's
being infectious.

19. Infectious works create movements, cool
cultures and counter cultures. They help us
make sense of our world without providing
an absolute answer to our many questions.
They are deeply layered leaving us wanting
for more. Above all, they are brutally simple
like the LBD.

20. LESSON 4. Mice can adapt to a new
environment quite faster than fast, making
them one of the animals you find anywhere
on earth. ADAPT OR DIE

21. Like Darwin said. Only the creature that adapt
in the circle of life truly survives. Things
change all around us. Economies change.
Consuming patterns change. Industries
change. From diskette to CD, from CD to flash
drives, from flash drives to clouds. Things are
bound to change and you don't just stand
there crying foul and blaming your stepmom
for your misfortunes.

22. Case study: There was a time we clutched
our Encyclopedia in forms of books and CD-
ROM. Today, the Wikipedia has changed all of
that. What do you do? Change.

23. Yea, you heard me. Change. Change your
operational model. Change your office. Who
needs that over-decorated reception when
most of your prospects are online? Change.
Change the way you see work hours for your
staff. The cities are getting overpopulated.
Transportations are barely enough for all. Do
people have to come to work from 8 to 5pm
when they can get most jobs done on their
computers at home? Change. Adaptation is
the no 4 rule of the mouse.

24. LESSON 5. Mice are the lab rats. Experiment.
EXPERIMENT WITH FAILURE.

25. You know the popular saying about the lab
rat? It's not a legend. Most laboratories of
human science today have to thank the mice
for allowing themselves to go through such
gruesome exercises in the lab. Mice embrace
experiment. So should you. You can't know if
it will work if you don't experiment with it.

26. Case Study: History has it that Thomas Edison
tried for a thousand times before he got the
light bulb right. After many experiments with
platinum and other filaments, Thomas Edison
returned to Carbon filament to give the world
a long lasting bulb.

27. I created a workbook out of this to teach the ‘how’ of each
lesson. The workbook gives you detailed steps to take. These
are techniques gleaned from over thousand best practices in
Brand and Idea Management as taught at Orange Academy.
If you want the workbook or you want to attend our next
Personal Branding workshop, send a mail to the Program
Officer at Orange Academy via info@kennybrandmuse.com
or info@cluborangeng.com.