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The Big Idea: How Business Innovators Get Great Ideas to Market

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The Big Idea: How Business Innovators Get Great Ideas to Market The Big Idea: How Business Innovators Get Great Ideas to Market Dearborn Trade Publishing Dedication To R. Buckminster Fuller This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative infor- mation in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the under- standing that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Acquisitions Editor: Mary B. Good Senior Managing Editor: Jack Kiburz Interior Design: Lucy Jenkins Cover Design: design literate, inc. Typesetting: Elizabeth Pitts 2002 by Steven D. Strauss Published by Dearborn Trade Publishing, a Kaplan Professional Company All rights reserved. The text of this publication, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permis- sion from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America 02030410987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Strauss, Steven D., 1958– The big idea : how business innovators get great ideas to market / by Steven D. Strauss. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7931-4837-5 (pbk.) 1. New products—Marketing. I. Title. HF5415.153 .S768 2002 658.5′75—dc21 2001004758 Dearborn Trade books are available at special quantity discounts to use for sales promotions, employee premiums, or educational purposes. Please call our Special Sales Department to order or for more informa- tion, at 800-621-9621, ext. 4307, or write Dearborn Trade Publishing, 155 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606-1719. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Contents Preface vi 1. The Impossible Dream 1 Vive la France The Story of Teflon 2 Lazy Bones Jones How the Remote Control Came to Be 8 Velcro Re-creating Nature’s Velvet Crochet 14 From Radar Waves to the Radar Range The Surprise Discovery of the Microwave Oven 19 The Great Pumpkin Center Birthplace of USA Today 25 2. Radicals in Blue 33 Guinea Pig B The Experiment That Created the Geodesic Dome 34 A Growth Industry The Revolutionary Development of Viagra 42 Educating a Nation The Difficult Task of Bringing Tampax to Market 47 From a Cocktail Party to the Moon Silly Putty’s Wild Ride 55 iii iv Contents 3. If You Build It, They Will Come 63 Divine Intervention The Inspiration for Post-it Notes 64 Here Kitty, Kitty Creating a Demand for Kitty Litter 69 The Mach 3 Razor The Tall Task of Replacing the Best a Man Can Get 73 It’s Party Time The Remarkable Marketing of Tupperware 79 Brushing Up Convincing America of the Benefits of Crest 85 4. Money, It’s a Drag 91 Bottoms Up Diapering a Nation with Pampers 92 The Third Time’s a Charm The Evolution of the Palm Pilot 96 All in the Family Funding the Production of Trivial Pursuit 106 A Stroke of Genius Liquid Paper’s Artistic Beginnings 113 5. The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men 121 Pong Giving Birth to a Video Nation 122 Cola War Casualty The Backlash Against New Coke 128 Mismanaging Innovation The Collapse of DeLorean 138 Lisa Computing’s Most Innovative Failure 144 Contents v 6. Resistance Is Futile 149 A Call to Action How the Cell Phone Overcame Government Bureaucracy 150 The New Volkswagen Beetle A Friendship Rekindled 155 The Big Cheese The Man Behind the Computer Mouse 161 Battling Depression Resisting the Opposition to Prozac 171 7. Pa t i e n c e I s a V i r t u e 17 9 Worth the Wait Barbie’s Long Road to the Prom 180 Instant Images The Split-Second Vision That Developed into the Polaroid Camera 187 The First Xerox Machine The Slow Journey to Quick Copies 193 Freedom Fighter Liberating People from Wheelchairs with the iBot 201 8. The Seven Great Lessons of Innovation 207 1. Think of Things That Never Were and Ask, “Why Not?” 208 2. The Power of One 209 3. Keep It Simple, Stupid 212 4. First Is Best 214 5. Try, Try Again 216 6. Risky Business 217 7. Synergy Is Necessary 218 Whatever You Can Do, Begin It 220 References 221 Index 223 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Preface Innovation. Businesses want it. Individuals crave it. Organizations strive for it. But what does it take, really, to innovate? If you are looking for a theoretical framework and long exposition discussing the pros and cons of various business methodologies, then you have come to the wrong place. But if you want entertaining, real-world, tried-and- true examples of amazing business innovations, then keep reading. The best way to learn and understand what it takes to innovate is by looking at people who have done it. In The Big Idea, you have the real-life stories of 30 different products that were truly unique, started as an idea in someone’s head, and went on to become household names. How did Procter & Gamble invent and market the world’s first dis- posable diapers, Pampers? How did Dr. Spencer Silver turn his mistake in the lab, a glue that wasn’t very sticky, into Post-it Notes? Did you know that the guy who invented the Palm Pilot had tried two previous times to create a hand- writing software recognition device? vi Preface vii Here are the stories of real people—some in large corpo- rations, some working on their own—who had a brainstorm one day, a eureka! moment, and then somehow figured out how to turn that idea into a global product or brand. These lessons are important, not just for entrepreneurs, but for anyone who wants to be more innovative. Chris Haney and Scott Abbot were two Canadian journalists that loved to play Scrabble. When they realized that Scott had bought six games of Scrabble over the course of his life because those little tiles have a tendency to get lost, the two friends decided to invent a board game. The fact that a successful new board game hadn’t been invented for 50 years didn’t matter. Trivial Pursuit was the result of their efforts, but it wasn’t created before one of the men almost had a nervous breakdown and both almost went bankrupt. In the end, they—and the friends and family who invested in their dream—became millionaires. Living the dream is what creating a great product is all about. Bobby Kennedy once said, quoting George Bernard Shaw, “Some men look at things that are and ask ‘Why?’ I think of things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” If ever there were an axiom for the innovative entrepreneur, this would be it. For a product to become wildly successful, someone must have an idea stuck in his or her head—a new idea about a new thing that simply won’t go away. The burn- ing desire to see it through, to make real what is just a thought, is the juice that drives the innovator. Great innovators have other traits in common as well. They are persistent, may fail more than once, but like the Energizer Bunny, they keep going and going. Earl Tupper spent his life tinkering and creating mostly worthless prod- ucts before he created a new type of plastic and invented Tupperware. If risk-taking is a trait shared by all entrepre- neurs, the entrepreneur who hitches his wagon to an inno- vative star is in a risk-taking class by himself. Al Neuharth viii Preface bet the considerable resources of Gannett Publishing on his belief that a national, general interest daily newspaper would f ly. USA Today is the result of that risk. These rags-to-riches stories of risk rewarded are, all at once, enlightening, fun to read, interesting, and useful. They pave a path that others can venture down and, in the process, teach people how not to make some of the same mistakes. By the same token, these stories can show you what works and what doesn’t. Years of hard knocks can be avoided. But that’s not all. What I have endeavored to do in this book is to put these tales of business innovation in con- text. Each chapter, therefore, revolves around a theme. What do the cell phone, the new Volkswagen Beetle, the computer mouse, and Prozac all have in common? If you read Chapter 6, you will learn that all faced enormous resis- tance and almost never came to be. In Chapter 8, all 30 of these disparate tales are woven together, and the lessons of these pioneers become accessible. Innovators like these people are all around us, and the ideas they are working on today may well be the products you use tomorrow. In San Francisco, Stone Melet is creat- ing a product that could make the Internet a much easier place to visit. Melet was an up-and-coming television news anchor/reporter when the innovation bug bit him. His idea: To create a better way for Web sites to gather informa- tion from their visitors. Melet and his cofounders realized that almost every Web site had to send visitors to a page buried deep in the site if it wanted to gather user com- ments, answer a question, or get an e-mail address. There must be a better way. As a result of their questing, Askfor- free.com was born. Melet drafted a business plan, quit his television job, moved across the country, and, based on the power of his commitment and an equally powerful con- cept, was able to attract seven-figure venture capital (VC) funding and some top-tier angel investors. The “AskBox” Preface ix Melet is developing will enable Web customers to interact with any site, without ever having to stop what they are doing and venture off to uncharted Web page territory.
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