While reading this month’s Inc. issue, I came across a very powerful visual that stood apart from all of the images of leisurely entrepreneurs seeming intelligent. The image looked like a mesh between a paperclip and a leveling tool.

Inc. June 2009, pg. 46

What pulled me in further was a quote by the CEO stating, “Your physician has a lot less information about your body than your mechanic has about your car. We want to change that.” A simple concept. This spread (likely brilliantly secured by a PR company) could have been swimming in acronyms and technological facts (much like the Dell B2B advertising that bookends the spread). But, instead the power was threaded in possibility.

The possibility of this tiny sensor (magnified here at 480 percent) providing our physicians information that doesn’t have to be either described by us, the patient, or the multitude of tests and dollars spent to come to conclusions. This “Disease-Fighter” created shock and awe in one reader (namely me) with very little information other than the eye-opening possibility.

I investigated.

I went to the company website hoping to extend this same level of enthusiasm and was whole-heartedly disappointed. Same old, same old. Generic stock photos, generic scientific animations, an overwhelming amount of text. Granted, I am not the target for this device, but how can you take such a mind-blowing healthcare technology breakthrough and make it mundane?

If you have the opportunity to be exceptional, let nothing stop you from creating that impression at every turn. Make it meaningful. Commit to cultivating that same enthusiasm that started the product or service and conveying that in every touchpoint. Nothing is too big or too small. Fight the instinct to be conservative.

The details are not the details. They make the design.

- Charles Eames