Page 165 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

156 STOP MAKING SENSE

goods and passengers through the air from city to city, continent to
continent, theme park to theme park.”
Nope. Not a one.
The Wright brothers, having found no buyers for their high-flying
idea stateside, had to go all the way to France to find a buyer for their
irrational new concept. It just didn’t make sense to the people of their
time. “Flying like a bird?” This concept was too outrageous to pene-
trate the inertia of conventional thought that occupied the minds of all
those who were approached with the opportunity to buy into this rev-
olutionary idea early on.
Idea? Heck, the airplane wasn’t just an idea. It was an industry. A
way of life. A precedent-setting world shrinker.
But it just didn’t make sense.
So, I guess you don’t have to feel so bad when your boss or cowork-
ers don’t always see the wisdom of your new ideas. Don’t worry—it just
might be a sign of how radical your idea truly is. (Hey, you wouldn’t be
planning any trips to France in the near future, would you?)

LAST STITCH EFFORT

The airplane has to be an isolated case, right? Maybe too big for most
people to get their minds around.
Hardly isolated.
Take the sewing machine. In fact, you might as well take this time-
saving device across the Atlantic where the Wright brothers went to fly
their new idea. Yup, that’s what Elias Howe had to do to get someone
to buy his newly patented device in 1846.
After a lifelong pursuit of perfecting the automatic stitching machine,
this tailor-turned-inventor gave up on selling the patent to American
business after having innumerable doors closed in his face. He took his
idea eastward. He stopped in England where he found a buyer not only
eager to take his new product to market, the scoundrel actually stole the
patent and sent Howe back to the States empty-handed. Ouch.

THE POLITICS OF NEW IDEAS

The first of Thomas Edison’s 1,093 patents was for an automatic vote
counter he developed to make counting election ballots quicker, easier,
and less prone to human error.