Leveraging the learnings from ‘edge cases’ to your business

Ever wanted to write a blog post on the subject of using the learnings from ‘edge cases’ to power your business? No rush! For the good reason that edge cases are traditionally regarded as of little value business wise, as this example from software UI underlines:

“Unlike a theorem, if your program makes 99 out of 100 users happy, you’re probably having a pretty good day. And it’s probably more important to make those 99 users happy again tomorrow than it is to figure out how to please that 100th user—especially if what he needs to make him happy would annoy the other 99.”

But if you still fancy having a go here’s my go at a logical simple framework for a blog post on how to impress customers – on how you are better than the one-size-fits approach which your competition takes, for whom serious consideration of edge cases is of no value:

  1. Your introduction outlines a hypothesis that edge cases can have value to wider business.
  2. Then two case studies where the first part outlines why at first analysis it would be considered an edge case.
  3. Then in second part why/what supports hypothesis that actually they have value to the wider business.
  4. Then to finish by considering what the analysis of the edge case hypothesis might mean for your business, and on particular your ability to add value to new clients as a result, going forward.

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Contrary business

Five contrary business ideas:

1. Date site marketing – comedy blog on ways to meet the opposite sex.
2. A Facebook app that keeps reminding your friends its your birthday until they post a greeting!
3. A Facebook app which allows you to praise your favourite McDonald’s employee and reward them. (just tweeted this idea today)
4. A pub app which shows where to go if you want a quiet place to sit and sip your pint.
5. A job finder community site where you can upload your CV for members to comment on and help improve it.