Page 37 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

The Rewards of a

Great Idea

When you have a great idea you have something that has tremendous
potential. Like an asteroid crashing into the ocean, it can cause mon-
umental initial impact and can effect a tidal wave of repercussions for
amazing distances for a very long time.

Someone had the idea of the wheel. That tidal wave is still cresting
and causing impact today.
Of course, not all ideas are quite so magnificent or recognized as
world-changing events. Take that simple little fastener device called
the button. Who had that idea? I don’t know, but that concept has
surely had a great, long-lasting impact on almost everyone on this
planet. I bet that if I counted the wheels and buttons in my life I would
find that the button plays as important a role (keeping my pants up) as
the wheel (getting me to the airport).
When you come up with a new idea, big or small, think about its
potential long-term effect. In the thinking/doing equation covered in
Chapter 18, “Mind Farming,” I talk about how most of what we do
in the course of a day (in meetings, on the phone, at the computer, trav-
eling, etc.) is in the service of executing an idea.
How good is that idea? Will it have a positive, lasting impact? Will
it blast through the atmosphere and fizzle before splashdown? Will it
change things affirmatively and irrevocably?
A great idea can make a company—Xerox, 3M, Volkswagen. It
can make an industry—computers, automobiles, aerospace. It can