AAAAARGH! you scream as you exit
the meeting. So, your great idea was turned down by someone at work or a
client. Is that failure? Yes, but not on your part. You researched the idea,
market, demographics, and, like most creatives, have a finger on the pulse of
pop culture. So, why didn’t it fly?
Most of the time it’s
because the world is filled with frightened, self-involved, visionless, jealous
robots masquerading in business attire that hold the key to moving forward with
innovation. Am I being too tough on the middle management? I can never gauge my
displeasure with the lack of innovation that causes society to backslide with
the opinions of others. I feel that stagnation is decay.
There is a question that
hiring managers like to ask interviewees, thinking they are trapping the poor
saps in a sticky web of words:
“
What do you do when you
are finished with your work?”
Most people will not know
how to answer. The hiring managers are looking for “ask for more work” as the
correct answer. I’ve always replied, with a laugh, “Who’s ever done with work?”
I tell them about my
self-initiated projects, creating product ideas, researching technological
advances, and new media applications to the company’s business acumen and
processes. This is where the interviewer’s eyes glass over and I’m thanked for
coming in but they “have more people to interview.”
Why? Because they want people who will ask for more work and not
go off their own, trying to create something outside of the team dynamic of
control and suppression. They would rather have someone ask for more work and
be given busy work like filing or stacking boxes than have someone trying to
figure out how to make millions of dollars for the company. That, of course, is
why America is where it is as a global innovator. We can’t even get to our own
space station anymore unless we hitch a ride with the Russians or Europeans.
Great ideas, however,
never die. They are put into cryogenic freeze until they either are introduced
by someone else and THEY make millions while your company follows suit with a
poor imitation a year or two later, or someone else at the company introduces
it months later once you are gone or castrated and no one will believe such a
eunuch would be able to think on such terms.
A number of toy buyers wouldn’t touch the Barbie doll when she made her debut in 1959.
The reason—she was too adult. The creator of the Barbie doll, Ruth
Handler said that stores would not order the doll because they felt the
consumers would not buy a doll with breasts. Now, of course, women are buying
plastic breasts by the millions! I’m betting the introduction of breast
implants met no opposition.
Conceived by an unemployed heating engineer in Philadelphia,
Clarence B. Darrow,Monopoly was turned down flat by
games manufacturer Parker Brothers as having too many fundamental playing
errors—52 to be precise.
Undaunted, Darrow proceeded with faith in his product to have
5,000 copies made by a local box manufacturer and met with huge success.
In 1935 Parker Brothers reversed their position and now Monopoly
is the most popular board game in history with over a thousand variations. I
wonder if any Parker Brothers executives were fired for turning it down in the
first place?
Oklahoma office worker George C. Beidler thought up the world’s
first photocopier back in 1903, but because it was painfully slow
it attracted very little attention. In 1938, however, an American patent
attorney Chester Carison improved upon the invention but was hard pressed to
find a research institute interested in taking the product further.
It was not until 57 years later that the Beidler dream of the
office photocopier came off the production line – and the Xerox 914 came onto
the market. I assume Beidler died penniless while Xerox made billions.
When Earl Silas Tupper first released his new product onto the
market in 1945 he boasted the products ability to be sealed airtight and
watertight. The seal almost proved to be his downfall as retail stores were
unable to open it. Tupperware was a product that initially was hidden from view from the buying
public on the top shelf in stores.
There is no truth to the rumor that Tupper’s coffin was a giant
Tupperware tub and he is still as fresh and tasty as the day he died.
Alex Moulton of Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire England designed the
revolutionary pushbikethat folds in 1958. It was offered to Raleigh Bicycles a year
later. They promptly rejected it. They felt the buying public would not
purchase such a radical new invention.
Moulton moved ahead anyway himself with his product and in 1965 sales
had reached 70,000.Two years later in 1967 Raleigh had admitted their error in
judgment and paid Moulton for the product rights. The executive who turned it
down in the first place was forced to ride 50 miles on a bicycle with no seat
attached to the frame pole. OUCH!
Author JK Rowling had her book about a boy wizard at a school for magic was rejected
by over two dozen publishers, including Penguin and HarperCollins, amongst
other well-known book companies. Bloomsbury, a small London publisher, only
took it on at the behest of the CEO’s eight-year old daughter, who begged her
father to print the book.
One can only hope there are over two dozen publishing editors who
are still unemployed and only a magic spell will help them find a new job.
“Unemployo-stupido!”
One publisher rejected George Orwell’s submission, Animal Farm, with these words: “It is impossible to sell
animal stories in the USA.”
According to one publisher, The Diary of Anne Frank was scarcely worth reading and wrote: “The girl
doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift
that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”
The most famous blunder? The Beatles were turned down by most of London’s music
executives. One famous rejection from Decca records (who chose a group called
the Tremoloes, who were local and would not cost as much money): “Guitar groups
are on the way out” and “the Beatles have no future in show business!”
If we can take any lessons from these examples, it’s that one
person…or several people can stop innovation, but it doesn’t mean they are
correct. Persistence will usually pay off and when it does, success is the best
revenge. Of course, meeting the person who turned you down again while they
take your burger order and ask you if you want fires with that can be
satisfying, too!
’ve found several ways to
introduce innovation with little effort. Most rejection does not happen because
people don’t believe in the idea—it occurs because people didn’t think of it
themselves. There are several solutions to approaching the problem.
The first is to find a
champion among higher-ups. Involving someone who can approve decisions will
create a “we” partnership instead of a “you” or “I” feeling. In the examples
given in this article, it was always one person who tried to break into the
inner circle. Teaming up with someone, usually above middle management, or just
someone who has the ear of upper management not only gets the idea heard but
makes it appear to be a company team effort and psychologically, that has more
weight than just one person. One person trying to make changes is considered a
“maverick” or a “rebel.” Romantic and cool in movies or on dates works, but not
for most businesses.
The second, as pointed out
to me by a coworker when I was angry about a great idea of mine being ignored,
is to innovate a little everyday. Stay under the radar. Big leaps of change
frighten people whereas small, unnoticed steps aren’t immediately seen. It
takes more planning and thought but it can be done.
A long time ago, being the
young and digital enthusiast at a publication that used computers to set type
headlines and then print the printouts on actual layout boards, I started small
changes. The first was to scan artwork that was too small for the assigned
space. Using the cloning tool in Photoshop, I saved money on the fees needed to
order new art to the specified size.
By working with the
printer, creating digital files after everyone had left the office and sending
them to the printer, half the magazine was printed digitally. When the angry editors
started demanding to know why half the magazine looked like crap, I was able to
show them not only how using digital files looked better, but figures from the
printer showed substantial savings over having to strip in images and type.
They didn’t exactly throw their hats in the air and yell, “WHOOPEE!” but with a
few face-saving negotiations, we could all look like heroes without
embarrassing anyone and, in the end, eventually the little negotiated steps we
had to do to appease the editors were forgotten.
Sometimes, it’s the little
things that pile up to become mountains of change. No idea is really a failure.
Even when turned down, it is usually a matter of timing and reintroduction.
Keep ideas and innovations on a shelf, awaiting a better time and place to
bring them to life. We are past the time of spending our entire careers in one
company, so ideas can travel with us. One firm may shun change and another will
encourage and yearn for it. Most of all, cherish that you have the ability to
see innovation and, as Mr. Jobs said, “…because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can
change the world, are the ones who do.”
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