The Deviant's Advocate

Deviance is the source of all innovation. It can be a force for good or for evil. It's the reservoir of new ideas, products, personalities and markets. All innovation and progress -- commercial, biological, social, scientific, artistic, and personal -- is a direct result of deviance. Deviance is an innovation virus, one that infects the status quo, changing traditional thinking at a primal level.

Today's criminal-justice system and social register are at loggerheads. There was a time when pimps were invective oppressors of women: including physical and sexual abuse, economic oppression and abandonment. And gangsters whose deep and pervasive corruptive influences extend beyond drug trafficking, extortion, and the more traditional forms of vice. Today, "gangsta-ism" is a prerequisite to having a Top 40 hit on the Billboard since "Rhyme Pays".

Deviance drives today's social and commercial agenda. Things that we found repulsive only yesterday we embrace today. Deviance migrates from the Fringe to Social Convention, rapidly creating markets and permanently changing the rules of the social and commercial game. The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the Fringe and Social Convention has disappeared.

Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once socially unacceptable is suddenly hot commodity. The rate of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness multiple deviances. The game's rules keep change before we get a chance to jot them down.

Deviance is really one of us taking one step away from the middle of the road. In individuals, ideas, products or institutions it is expressed as it chugs along a fixed and predictable path.

Fringe (where it first appears in the mind of a true deviant): you'll find yourself moving from the comfort of the accepted into the fast-paced world of the trendsetter.

Edge (where it picks up a small following): you'll land in the rarified realm of the ultra cool avant-garde.

Realm of the Cool (where it begins to develop a broader following among trendsetters): you are in the seductive yet frightening world of the cultist and the fanatic.

Next Big Thing (where the formerly unthinkable becomes almost de rigueur): you'll crash head-on into the heart of social darkness: the world of naked, pure, unabashed, and largely frightening deviance.

As the deviant enter the "Realm of the Cool", it acquires a growing audience because the idea is starting to win more media coverage. What was once preposterous is now taunting and teasing the sensibility of society. Cool Hunters and culture vultures nurture this market. As the deviant achieves audience size and market scale in the Realm of the Cool, it's ready to move on to the Next Big Thing.
At that point, the original deviant is little more than a distant reference point, and has now become sanitized, commercialized, and packaged. Conventional society may flirt with the deviant when it's in the Realm of the Cool. But when the deviant hits the Next Big Thing, those in the mainstream become genuinely engaged with it.

Athletes, actors, and musicians used body ink as a way of telling the world that they were big enough and powerful enough to reject social taboos. Tattoos shifted from being badges of guilty pleasure to being visible status symbols proudly worn. Today, tattoos are an essential part of the formal uniform of any self-respecting, pampered, suburban youth intent on demonstrating his/her individualism. These days, every male athlete/rock star worthy of the name carries a storyboard of ink on their body.

The pattern is universal for all to see. In film, food, or fashion; In magazines, music, or medicine; or In wellness, fitness, or any other form of being hip. Deviance tells the story of every mass market ever created. What starts out as weird and dangerous mutates until it becomes a saleable commodity for corporate America.

Deviance ought to be a big business, if it weren't for one thing: cultural problems. Culture poses major opposing problems for deviants: Popular American culture is full of new opportunities and it loves the deviant. American corporate culture serves as an organizational anti-virus, protecting business-as-usual businesses from new opportunities. Corporate culture hates the deviant; it works to eliminate deviant employees and discourage deviant ideas. Corporate culture punishes deviant behavior and attitudes. Thanks to all this hate, most large corporate lose the opportunity to discover the future and get there first.

Companies are stuck in a deeply disturbing rut that they are unable to work out: All innovation springs from deviance. Innovation is good. But deviance always ends up being bad. As a consequence, established businesses tend to feel caught between their addictive thirst for breakthrough offerings and their fear and hatred of anyone who refuses to parrot the party line.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The history of innovation proves it; corporate leaders need to accept it: The advantage always falls to the deviant, because nature and commerce hates the status quo.

Deviants don't, won't, or can't play by the rules. Their mission to propagate deviance. They are the greatest hope that moribund corporations have for renewing their vision, energy, innovation, and future. The challenge to business is simple: Think deviant!