My hobby is songwriting. One thing I have noticed: sometimes I get into a corner and have a "musical problem" that seems very hard to solve, usually having to do with how to get from the end of a chorus back to the beginning of a verse, since they are usually in different (though related) keys. Sometimes I have literally played with one particular transition for years (luckily I'm not making albums so I can keep tweaking as long as I want!), working to make it sound good enough.

And I've noticed that when a solution finally emerges, it is often the very best thing about the song... I guess because a solution to such a problem must really be unusual and creative -- it can't be by rote. (While driving home last night I came up with a solution to a musical problem I've been struggling with for a few months, and that prompted this entry.)

Similar principles hold in business. For instance, when Dell was still PC's Limited (this was a loooong time ago) they were reviewed as having excellent hardware but terrible customer service. They were a small company with one location and it was hard to compete with the likes of IBM's service capabilities.

So they had a "business problem". What did they do? They contracted with service companies all over the world so that they could supply 24 hour on-site service -- which IBM was NOT doing. So instantaneously they went from having service as the weakness that was holding them back to having service as, arguably, their greatest competive advantage at that time. This is a model I've learned to keep in mind as an entrepreneur as well as in my songwriting: the hardest problems seem frequently to also be the greatest opportunities.

(Note to musical readers: I happened to read something about John Lennon's You're Going To Lose That Girl last night... check out the radical change of keys in the chorus and the extremely unusual transition back to the key of E by way of F. Here's a discussion.)
9:18:13 AM