Marketers like to work on the demand side—take what's in demand, make it cheaper, run a lot of ads, make a profit. If you can increase demand for what you have already made, a lot of problems will take care of themselves. It's the promise made by the typical marketing organization: Give us money, and we'll increase demand. There's an overlooked alternative. If you can offer a scarce and coveted good or service that others can't, you win. What is both scarce and in demand? Things that are difficult: difficult to conceive, to convey, and to make. Sometimes difficult even, at first, to sell—maybe an unpopular idea or a product that's ahead of its time. In fact, just about the only thing that is not available in unlimited supply in an ever more efficient, connected world is the product of difficult work. It's no longer particularly difficult to run a complex factory. There are people across the globe able to do it more cheaply than you. Commoditization doesn't apply only to making and selling cheap goods. Almost everything they teach in business school is easy to do. It's easy to do the options pricing model. Providing audit services isn't difficult. Neither is running a high-traffic website. Amazon will do it for you for pennies on the dollar. With a lack of difficulty comes more choice, more variation, and, yes, lower prices. And so consumers of every stripe are jaded. This puts huge pressure on organizations, because the race to the bottom demands that they either do all this easy work faster or do it cheaper than they did it yesterday. And there's not a lot of room to do either one. The only refuge from the race to the bottom? Difficult work. Your only alternative is to create something scarce, something valuable, something that people will pay more for. What's difficult? Creating beauty is difficult, whether it's the tangible beauty of a brilliant innovation or the intangible essence of exceptional leadership. Beauty exists in an elegant and novel approach to a problem. Maybe it's captured in a simple device that works intuitively, reliably, and efficiently or in an effective solution—a "beautiful" solution—to an organizational dysfunction. And it exists in the act of connecting with and leading people. Leading changes is difficult. It's difficult to find, hire, and retain people who are eager and able to change the status quo. It's difficult to stick with a project that everyone seems to dislike. It's difficult to motivate a team of people who have been lied to or had their spirits dashed. People who can do difficult work will always be in demand. And yet our default is to do the easy work, busywork, and work that only requires activity, not real effort or guts. That's true of individuals, and also true of companies. That's because we regard our role as cranking out average stuff for average people, pushing down price, and, at best, marginally improving value. That used to be the way to grow an organization. No longer. The world will belong to those who can create something scarce, not something cheap. The race to the top has just begun.

单选题 In the text, difficult things are characterized by

单选题 What can we infer from paragraph 3 and 4 ?

单选题 According to the text, which of the following can be seen as difficult work?

单选题 The underlined phrase "a team of people" in paragraph 6 refers to

单选题 Our inclination to do easy work goes against