I've been thinking about TiVo (or however you are supposed to do the caplitalization there) because of some paralells with a client's product - there's something there about an idea that is only understandable at first as a combination of other ideas, depending on your orientation/experience.

TiVo is a DVR or a PVR (whatever jargon you like), which if you read blogs you probably know what that means. Some digital technology that handles digital-like functions around video recording.

But to explain TiVo to a variety of people who haven't used it or seen it requires a bunch of different "features" - none of which really get to the point
- pause live TV
- subscribe to a fave TV show, every week
- tapeless VCR
- goes and finds programs that you didn't ask it to, that you might like

Those are very different, at least if you don't understand what the hell a DVR is. So, articulating the experience of the product in a way that is saleable/marketable seems like a challenge. I've never worked in this category directly, but in talking to users about home entertainment and other home technologies, I've seen that their own interpretation of it varies, and most don't articulate the DVR idea as much as some subset of the list above. Other times I've tried to tell people about the product and what it does, and have only been able to connect around enumerating that list...

Anyway :)

I will loan you my copy of New Ideas About New Ideas, which I think you will like...

damn html.

http://newideasaboutnewideas.com/

Cool!

There's also "The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change" by Randall Collins, which I just discovered yesterday. It's 1000 pages long, so I suspect I won't be reading it right off, but it's on the Amazon wish list now. ;-)

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/contents/COLSOC_toc.html

You should look into Purple Cow by Seth Godin. He comes to the same conclusion as you and provides insights on how to take advantage of the situation.