Before & After : Creative thinking in business

In the TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, when put on the spot about the graphical user interface for the Macintosh, (the soul of Mac’s operating system) which had been developed by Xerox, the character Steve Jobs uses the Picasso, quote, “A good artist borrows. A great artist steals.”

Apocryphal or not, that philosophy may still be alive at Apple, and in part it’s behind the iPod’s amazing success.

In his book The Perfect Thing, Newsweek writer, Steven Levy, points out that most all of the technology inside the iPod has been developed by companies other than Apple; Toshiba, Sony, Texas Instruments and others. So what exactly did this “innovative” company, Apple, do? (more…)

Did you read last week about the clerk at a convenience store in North Carolina who mistakenly printed out one too many lottery tickets for a customer, and was stuck with the ticket?

She tried all day long to get others to buy the ticket. She found no takers. So she bought the ticket herself and won $200,000.

When I read this I thought it would be a good platform for a blog topic - taking a creative opportunity that no one wanted and converting it for big rewards. Theory, sure, yet I’m certain there are situations in all of our lives where we simply miss creative potential right under our noses. But I tend not to do topical stuff in my blog, so I just let the idea go,…

Then last night, during a conversation with an art director who had worked at my former ad agency, that theory took on some form. When I complimented this ex-employee (who will remain nameless) on some very nice work he’d been doing for a traditionally stuffy marketer, he told me about his experience “getting stuck” with this conservative, risk-averse advertiser… Yeah, how he “got stuck” holding a creative ticket, no one wanted, then went on to win the creative opportunity lottery. Interesting… (more…)

There are a lot of really bad ideas in business. But, you’re gonna’ have to get up pretty late to beat my candidate for the worst marketing idea of all time.

You gotta’ love the spray paint cure for baldness. You’ve seen this stuff advertised on TV, right? This is so horrible it’s brilliant.

Besides proving that P.T. Barnum was right, it gives all hacks hope that they too might strike it rich developing and marketing this type of product. You know they’re successful. Just look at they lavish commercials they run on mass for shut-ins on Sunday mornings.

I hope to hear from you on this important matter. What is the worse possible business idea of all time. Heck, even the worst one you’ve seen lately. I’ll even include visuals, as long as we hear a loud thud when we look at them. If you want to send a visual along with your nomination, include a URL to where the image is on the web and we’ll do the rest at this end.

And, yes, that’s me in the fake ad. I couldn’t resist.

Look around you. Look at all the good ideas. All the good stuff. Products. Services. Art. Entertainment. Try to find great stuff.

Voltaire said, “Good is the enemy of great.”

When it comes to creative thinking in business, I believe the reason most people don’t come up with great ideas is because they come up with a good idea, and then they stop.

In all fields, we see too many people, even pretty creative people, stop at their first good idea too often. Is it because they are too busy? Too lazy? Their standard is too low?

Take advertising, the business where I made a living for 20 years as a player and the past dozen or so as a coach; by today’s standards, most work that was done 20, 30 years ago was pretty bad. Back when the average American was exposed to fewer than 1200 messages a day, the best advertising stood out, as much as anything, because most of the work was not very good.

Today, the average work that appears in the media is much better. I’ll even say it’s good. But what good is good? When the average American is exposed to over 3,000 messages, how many are making an impact? Even if you say 10% (which I think is a high estimate at 300), still 90% of the work is invisible or forgettable.

“But it’s pretty good!” you might protest. And I say, “it doesn’t matter. If it isn’t great, it’s not worth much in the ad sweepstakes.”

Good is seductive. Good is too often good enough to feel like you’re finished thinking, but not good enough to win big in the marketplace. (more…)