*Each Monday, Prophet’s Chief Curator and Provocateur, Andy Stefanovich, or a member of our innovation team shares a Monday on-ramp with Prophet employees across the globe. We’ll begin sharing them here, and encourage you to join the conversation by answering questions and providing your own comments below. Happy Monday!

The winner of this year’s 2011 Webby Artist of the Year Award is the award-winning band LCD Soundsystem. In the press release to the Webby Awards Celebration in New York City, LCD Soundsystem was praised for “fully harnessing the power and scope of the Internet as creative visionaries and musicians”. How did they do it?

After announcing their break up, their final show was met with such excitement from the music community that fans took to the Internet to express their ardent love for the band; the final show not only sold out in minutes but also wreaked havoc on ticket-selling sites - the massive demand spike crashed them for hours.

Tickets to the final show became such a prized commodity that LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy publicly denounced scalpers on his Twitter account, using colorful language to the affect of “No show is worth $1500/ticket. I hate all scalpers.”

In his attempt to get even with the illegal ticket salesmen, the band’s lead man took the ingenious (and, to the music establishment, confusing) move of teaming up with music site Pitchfork.tv to live stream the final show for free, to the world. This decision, to have the nearly 4-hour show live-streamed, brought their online fan community together in a way only the Internet could, marking the night as the band’s greatest musical moment - online and off.

Many commentators focused on the fact that LCD Soundsystem gave access to the show away for free. But, isn’t the real story the fact that millions of people were interested in this (previouslyobscure) band at all? LCD Soundsystem would never have been able to generate this much online interest without working for nearly a decade to connect with people in personal, unconventional live venues across the globe. In other words, to build a connection with their fans, they had to be willing to take big risks and embrace confusion tolerance.

This idea goes against main-stream business culture. Even though building a meaningful connection is rewarding, fulfilling and (most importantly for us as consultants) a powerful way to drive sales, many businesses remain shackled to safe modes of thinking and acting.

Perhaps this is why James Murphy was initially criticized for his non-traditional approaches to building relationships with his fans. Streaming the show for free simply seemed too confusing and non-traditional to possibly value. In the final analysis, however, the result was unambiguous – this event built more brand equity than anything LCD Soundsystem had ever done before.

Now, after their breakup, LCD Soundsystem continues to grow in popularity. Former lead-man James Murphy headlines shows around the globe, LCD’s albums sell more than ever, and their inspiring work continues to inspire fans to evangelize on their behalf.

This willingness to go off the beaten path and tolerate confusion in pursuit of meaningful relationships leaves a legacy of goodwill they will be drawing-upon for years.

Make it real:

• Are there opportunities for pursuing confusion tolerance that could help your engagements get to the bigger big?
• How should we use confusion tolerance to build value in a non-traditional way?
• Following through on intuition played a critical role in LCD Soundsystem’s breakthrough innovation. What things are holding you back from following your intuition in a bold new direction?