From Fringe to Social Convention... Are you nurturing your deviant thinkers? Well, positive deviancy may just be the key to your financial success. That's the message from Mathews and Wacker in their new book, The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets. "Deviance is the backbeat of commerce, the rhythm of innovation that drives wealth creation and defines attitudes and values."

The authors describe how hit products and services move through a five-stage cycle -- the Fringe, the Edge, the Realm of the Cool, the Next Big Thing, and, finally, Social Convention -- in an increasingly compacted time frame. Thus, NASCAR moves from bootleggers in the South to America's fastest-growing spectator sport. (Go Jeff, Junior, and Rusty!)

Successful companies expose themselves to "ideas and people that are foreign, uncomfortable, and, more often than not, downright hostile and threatening. Think how baggy trousers went from the ghetto to your local high school. Or how Harley-Davidson went from Hell's Angels' bike of choice to the "icon of luxury and indulgence for well-heeled, white-collar baby boomers."

So who's pursuing deviant real estate ideas? How about flexible officing, commercial multiple listings services, electronic invoicing, wireless building networks, or salaried agents? Will any of these become Social Convention or will they remain on the Fringe? What do you think?

Building Your Brand... Thanks to our new sponsor this week -- the HighPointe Group, providers of rooftop management and site assessment services. If you would like to sponsor the PikeNet Dispatch, send e-mail or call me at 415-485-6700. Thanks!

--Peter Pike