Jeremy Gutsche Interview at BornRich.org Edit

I’ve probably been interviewed a hundred times by now, and the questions usually blur together; however, the Born Rich interview was a lot more fun. Nandini Maheshwari, the Instablogs President and the editor of BornRich, does a great job of crowd sourcing her questions to make the interviews more interesting.

For those who don’t already follow BornRich.org, it’s one of our favorite sources for all things luxurious.

Here’s an excerpt of the first few questions:

Jeremy Gutsche Interview

1. Paul: What is the next big thing we can expect from Jeremy Gutsche?

Jeremy: On the Trend Hunter side, we’ve got a dozen of new features in development and more ideas for Trend Hunter TV… On my innovation side, I recently signed a book deal with Gotham books. My book, launching in September, is titled: EXPLOITING CHAOS: How to Spark Innovation and Identify Opportunities During Times of Change. I’m having a lot of fun with the content and the timing for the topic seems ideal.

2. Allen: What all you want people to remember about you?

Jeremy: The goal of Trend Hunter was to provide a place where people could share ideas and get inspired. Similarly, the goal of my keynote speeches is to provide people with a toolkit for leveraging trend spotting and innovation frameworks in their creative process. Accordingly, I hope that people remember me as someone who helped to fuel their creativity!

3. Irene: How important do you think is branding? What do you do to keep the “Jeremy Gutsche brand” going?

Jeremy: Branding creates preference and emotion, so who wouldn’t want a good brand? Personally, I am so in love with Trend Hunter that I pour my heart into it and the Trend Hunter community. Hopefully along the way that builds the Jeremy Gutsche brand… but it’s TrendHunter that I would tattoo to my neck. ;)

4. Sasha: If we pretend for some time that you’re the current CEO of Microsoft, what would you suggest (for free, of course) to give it an edge over Google?

Jeremy: One of the most difficult things in business is to cannibalize one’s core business in order to reinvent. It’s time Microsoft started to open up their code and give things away. Let me give you an interesting example from my upcoming EXPLOITING CHAOS book:

“Destroying Value – Opportunities and precious talent are lost when companies avoid destroying value. These opportunities often exist in periods of crisis. In the 90s, Bill Gates wanted to digitize Britannica, but the encyclopedia company turned him down, worried about cannibalizing their printed book sales. Gates then approached Encarta, and the Microsoft-Encarta partnership was born. The digital reinvention made Encarta the most recognized, best-selling brand of encyclopedias. If Britannica had been willing to destroy value, they would have evolved and could have survived. But it’s not that easy. Later on, even Encarta and Microsoft lost their value after resisting moving to the web and instead, Wikipedia was born. Today, Wikipedia.com is one of the world’s ten most popular websites and Encarta and Britannica have faded away. Destroying value is nearly impossible for organizations to do, but resistance limits creative options. Openness to value destruction introduces the freedom to consider breakthrough ideas.”

Read the full interview at BornRich.org