Stagvertising.

editor's note: This post was written almost three weeks ago. Before the Omnicom/IPG subsumation, which gives us an entity that has over 1,000 separate presidents. Perhaps more presidents than creatives. Though written back in November, it is today, more relevant than ever.

I don't remember the exact conference room, but I remember I was in a conference room at R\GA (Agency for the Digital Age) when I first heard the term: Minimal Viable Product.

I also remember throwing up a little bit in my mouth. I can still taste the bile.

The term MVP was tossed around as if it were acceptable. No one--a linguist, someone interested in semantics or even a human transliterated it into "The Least We Can Do and Get Away With It." Except for cancer, bullying, belly-fat and taxes who wants the minimum of anything.

But here we are.

Minimal Viable Product.

I finished Monday night a book called called "Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation," by Bryne Hobart and Tobias Huber.
You can buy it here, buy a machete here to cut your way through it, and read The Wall Street Journal review here.

I read a lot of challenging books, and Boom is among the most inscrutable I've ever read. That's not only because I don't have an advanced degree in economics, it's also because I'm almost 67 and have never once used the word "thymotic," though Hobart and Huber use it about once every twenty pages.

That said, the thesis of "Boom" is simple. 

All the things modern social organizations, enterprises, laboratories, research centers, universities and even ad agencies do to increase their bottom lines run counter to their need to create something great.

Cost-accounting will never produce the first lightbulb, cheese in a can, or great ad.

Yet, in every sphere of our lives, cost-accounting is our sine non qua. That's Latin for "our scrotum in a vise."

Huber and Hobart talk about how in academic research roughly 47 out of 100 hours is spent on writing grants. And probably another 20 to 30 hours is spent looking for citations and precedents. Leaving about one-hour-in-five to actual thinking.

That's not counting meetings, meetings about meetings and the meetings we have to complain about having too many meetings.

The advertising parallel is there for all to see. We probably spend 47-percent of our time on award entries. 30-percent of our time studying previous award-winners for tips, and 20-percent of our time watching HR's "handy" videos. I call them handy because they're usually about not touching anyone and not greasing any palms.

In both scenarios, the dynamic leads to something very dire. Work that is only incrementally different from work that went before, that is work that is "stagnant," not "inventive." Our work doesn't go from the Wright Brothers to Lockheed's Skunk Works. It goes from a 20-watt bulb to a 20.5-watt bulb. That we get awards for.

The point is the system has in effect mandated that we derive a "Minimal Viable Product." In an agency, you can only spend a finite number of hours. Experienced people are unaffordable. And no longer do we really get to know the client or the product.

Instead, we are told we have to--by end of day--fill in 27 different sizes of digital rectangles and everyone of them must say "triple-play bundle," and fourteen other mandatories, all as people around us are being "right-sized," or "outsourced," or "castrated," and the we wonder why people hate our work and we hate our jobs.

The system, the dominant complacency, demands that we create a Minimal Viable Product for Minimally Viable Effect and that we, in essence, become Minimally Viable Humans.

Think about this in terms of your last flight on a commercial airline. Even if the flight attendant had the innate kindness of a Mother Teresa, she has no time for eye-contact, no time to be decent, no time for anything but Minimal Viable Linoleum. 

Meanwhile the plane itself, has minimally viable seats, minimally viable bath-rooms, minimally viable pretzels, and probably minimally viable safety equipment. The same ethos applies to the actual flight. Departure, arrival, getting baggage all governed by minimally viable standards.

If you want to think about it, most everything today operates under these strictures. It's why almost everything sucks. From your expensive meal to your cheap one, from your government to your subway ride to work.

What's The Least We Can Do and Get Away With It?

Huber and Hobart believe in the lack-of-common-sense-ness of bubbles. Massive expenditure of things that could change everything--that might never happen.

Those bubbles--whether they burst to build--create standards, enthusiasm, opportunity, competition and spillover effects. 

For instance, if an agency has one real account where good work is done, the entire agency improves. Everyone competes to do the good work. And people who can't get into that account get angry and work to make their business great.

That's how Boom businesses, Boom agencies and Boom careers are made.

Or stagnation.