What is a Purple Cow?

What do purple cows and purple chickens have in common?

The answer isn’t that they’re both purple.

"Purple Cow" is a nonsensical poem by Gelett Burgess from 1895:

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.

Marketing writer Seth Godin wrote a book called Purple Cow in the early 2000s, based on the concept that cows get boring to look at after awhile, but a Purple Cow would get your attention because a Purple Cow is remarkable (there’s more but you’ll have to read the book). Burgess and Godin seem to both agree they’d be down to see a Purple Cow.

Interestingly, the Purple Chicken is successful for the exact opposite reason.

It avoids detection.

Kenyan farmers discovered that hawks and eagles were confused by the color purple, or at least don’t associate it with food and developed a way to safely dye chickens purple to keep predators away. This hides the chicken in plain sight, keeping it safe from harm.

A Purple Chicken becomes unremarkable to eagles, and unremarkable to the farmers who see them everyday. The regular chicken is obvious, the Purple Chicken is camouflaged.

So, what do Purple Cows and Purple Chickens have in common?

One is aspirational and one is real, but they’re both really about creative problem solving.

The lesson from Purple Cows and Purple Chickens is that the best answer to a problem is often unexpected or not obvious. In fact, it may have never been done before in the exact way that you need it for your situation.

We can practice “purple thinking” by subverting our own expectations on purpose in familiar contexts. Disrupt your own patterns to force yourself to see things differently. “Vuja de” or jamais vu is the concept of looking at a familiar situation with fresh eyes and seeing it in a new light.

It’s through this process that we create remarkable solutions, and it starts with small practices every day like recognizing that our first idea probably isn’t our best one and staying open-minded and experimental.

If you’re feeling stuck, change your routine, look in other industries and disciplines, and blur your own perception of the problem until it’s no longer recognizable to you and try again from a new angle, you may just start seeing purple.