The “virtual no” kills 100 times more ideas than brain dead bosses ever will.
By virtual no I mean the internal sensor that judges, “It’s not reasonable, it’s not practical, the boss won’t like it, it’s not even possible.”
With my clients it’s common for project team members to say that management has rejected specific ideas. However, when I ask their management why it rejected the specific idea, I get a blank stare. What has happened is the project team has killed the idea through the “virtual no”—they’ve anticipated that the idea would be killed and thus never presented it to management.
Adults are so accustomed to censoring themselves that censoring a newborn idea is almost an involuntary action. In time the difference between a genuine and a virtual no becomes blurred.
Admittedly, like babies, newborn ideas are often ugly. They may appear to be wretched little mutants that ought to be hidden away.
Don’t hide them.
Newborn ideas seldom arrive as completed entities. How many gawky Little Leaguers have grown up to hit home runs in All-Star games? How many former finger painters have created works that hang in the world’s great art museums?
“You’ll increase your creative potential once you begin to value your own thoughts.”
– Richard Saunders
Give Newborn Ideas a Safe Place to Grow
“I thought of that” doesn’t count. It takes courage to bring a real new-to-the-world idea out into the light of day because you’re going where no one else has been.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this marketing expert or that claim that, at one time or another, they’d conceived of the very same idea that happened to be on the table at the moment.
I would ask them what happened to the idea. “Aaaahhhh,” they’d say. They’d decided to put the brakes on it. They didn’t trust it. It was too different, too impractical, too something. They filled in the adjectives of their choice.
But all they’d had was the illusion of an idea. A figment.
Ideas only become real when you invest your energy into making them happen.
Don’t make the same mistake. Give your newborns a safe place where they can be protected from the whims of ruthless Real World Adults. If you, your team, your company or your family is too ready to kill a newborn idea, try this:
When an idea sprouts in your mind, write it down on a scrap of paper. Then put it in a newborn incubator. This can be a folder, a shoebox, or an empty mayonnaise jar—any quiet safe place where your idea can have a chance to grow straight and true. Add other newborns as they occur to you.
At the same time, tuck your ideas away for refinement in the soft, warm folds of your subconscious. Then, after a few days or maybe even a few weeks, go back to your newborn incubator and sort through the occupants.
Every idea that travels through your cranium has some merit, even those of a seemingly hopelessly hair-brained nature. But it often takes time to discern their value. If you give them room to incubate, you’ll be amazed at their potential.
Which leads me to the next self-evident truth:
Breakthroughs Contradict History!
Great ideas shake things up. They deny precedent and redefine the world. An idea has to break rules to be wicked good. If it doesn’t, chances are it’s been done before.
When an idea is not new and different, it’s just another face in the crowd. When a number of companies sell the same product or service, they’re dealing in a commodity market. Commodities sell for commodity prices; that is, they don’t sell for much. New and different ideas are where the money is.
The same principle applies when you are the product. When I was fresh from the University of Maine interviewing for jobs, I sought to stand out from the crowd. Where my classmates carried textbook-perfect one-page resumes, I presented a scrapbook of my business ventures and copies of press clippings. I performed a magic trick I called Merwyn’s Magic Bunnies and gave the interviewer a set of sponge bunnies for his very own. Despite a C-plus academic record, I landed as many job offers as my blue chip classmates.
“Inventing is the great theatrical art of ‘what if.’”
– Richard Saunders
A good example of a product that contradicts history is the classic board game Trivial Pursuit. Back in the day when it first surfaced, back in 1983, it broke a lot of rules and cut deeply against the conventional wisdom.
• It was a board game for adults, and “everyone knew” adults didn’t buy board games.
• It sold for $25, and “everyone knew” board games had to sell for less than $10 to succeed.
• It was a trivia game, and “everyone knew” that trivia games didn’t sell.
As it happened, one board game buyer, Bill Hill, vice president of research and development at Selchow and Righter, saw some magic in the game.
“I played it and found it fun,” he told me. “It was a trivia game but you didn’t need a huge amount of knowledge to play it. The packaging, the game play, the entire concept was fresh and original for the time.”
“In today’s sailing races, they have all these rules that restrict you. They tell you how to set every one of your ropes. I think I should be able to do whatever I can to win, no matter how dumb it may seem to those young folks, as long as I don’t have an engine or a larger boat or sail.”
– William H. Holder (my great grandfather)
It’s human nature to discourage the new and the different. Human nature weighs heavily toward history while neglecting to take into account history’s lesson—namely, that break-throughs—those things that contradict history—are what change the world. I’m all for respecting history, but I also believe in creating it.
And with that, we’ve arrived at the next self-evident Eureka! Truth.
Reality Is Not Relevant!
When creating ideas, you’re best served when you ignore reality—at least during the invention process. You’ll have time enough for reality later. It has a way of imposing its values in self-fulfilling ways.
Reality is relative. Current reality rejects new ideas in favor of conventional wisdom. With original thinking, it’s possible to define new realities, change entire systems, and create a new balance of constraints and opportunities.
“Of course it’s impossible. That’s why you should do it, and that’s why you’ll make money.”
– Richard Saunders
What’s relevant is perception. What counts is what people think it is, not what it in fact is. Perception is the only reality customers will spend their money on. It’s the only reality that will compel them to break their existing routine and switch to your business or contribute money to your charity.
If you want to Jump Start your thinking, forget about truth, reality, and fact. Enter instead into the world of perception, feeling, and gut instinct.
The legend of Ben, the new Procter & Gamble brand manager, illustrates the power of perception.
Ben was getting ready to attend his first annual budget meeting. It didn’t take much for these meetings to degenerate into public floggings as senior management types challenged brand managers to justify marketing budget requests for the upcoming year. It was sport for senior managers. Great fun.
Ben hatched a plan. Just before leaving