Yes, another start of a quantified collection, this one of
great musings about Surprise.
To kick it off, within the book “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (capsule
review: Somewhat pedantic, but an ultimately exquisite look at how to create
new market spaces untouched by competition) is the story of Samuel “Roxy”
Rothapel, who was a cinema owner at the turn of last century (and the source of the "Roxy" moniker for movie theaters throughout the world, starting with his own at 50th and 7th in New York).
As movies became an increasingly popular form of mass
entertainment for Americans, Roxy knew how best to impress the growing hordes
of customers:
“Giving people what they want is fundamentally and
disastrously wrong. The people don’t
know what they want. Give them something
better.”
This quote is close to 100 years old, yet still
unequivocally relevant.
