thereifixedit.com has many examples of bad ideas, which, probably, won’t spread…

When I talked about Voodoo Histories by Aaronovitch the other day, I maybe stretched things a bit when I talked about Crocs as a bad idea that spread. In fact, several parts of that post weren’t very clear. I think a better description of Aaronovitch’s main idea is that conspiracy theories arise when there is some kind of empirical fact that a particular group has to explain away – in many cases the easiest option is to blame it on a conspiracy. There are two current examples of this taking place. The first it the lunatic idea currently circulating in the US that Barrack Obama is not a US citizen, and that consequently his election is the result of some kind of conspiracy. This appears to be an easier idea for some people to swallow than the fact that his policies were more popular than McCain’s. In fact, this is a variation of the fairly common political reaction in the US – ‘people voted for the guy we don’t like because they were fooled’. Liberals trotted out this argument far too often during the Reagan and Bush eras.

The second example, and one more in line with the examples in the book is going on in Iran, where over 100 members of the opposition party are going on trial. In this case, the empirical fact that won’t go away is the extensive rioting that occurred after the recent election. Ahmadinejad’s supporters can’t really say that the riots happened because they stole the election, so instead they have developed an elaborate conspiracy theory. The actual charges in this case are that the “reformist political groups have been working with foreigners to foment a popular uprising against the government”. That’s why we had riots, apparently.

So, bad ideas spread in these cases because they explain away uncomfortable facts. The question that arises in trying to map this to business is: do bad innovations spread for the same reason? I’m not entirely convinced that they do, and that’s why my Crocs example was a bit of a stretch.

I still wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of them though…