Page 15 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Walt Disney strategy

Walt Disney was certainly one of the most creative people in the 20th century. With his skill of
g ener ating successful business ideas, he built o ne o f the big g est media co ng lo mer ates in the wo r ld.
Walt Disney created fantastical ideas that might have sounded crazy and unfeasible at first glance, then
considered how to make these fantasies a reality and finally evaluated them. In the process of
generating new ideas, Walt separated his thinking into 3 stages: Dreamer, Realist and Critic.

A Dreamer generates creative ideas. There are no limitations and your imagination can take you
anywhere. Imagine that you have a magic wand and everything is possible. For the Dreamer, cats can
fly, houses are made of ice cream, TVs have legs and dance. At this stage your goal is to create and
write down as many ideas as possible and the crazier they are, the better. You will have multiple
opportunities to judge your ideas later, but while being a Dreamer turn off your analytical left brain.
Judging and evaluating block your creative subconscious mind.

The Realist answers the question, “How can I make this idea a reality?” At this stage, you decide how
to adopt or modify the idea to make it practical for the market. Even if you decide to discard the idea
later, you need to first ponder how to make it real and how it can be combined with your other ideas.
Give each idea a chance to live before criticizing it.

As the Critic, you should identify potential flaws of the idea. Why might it not work? What potential
problems and difficulties in implementation could your idea have? Most important for you is to begin
judging and evaluating ideas only after you have been a Dreamer and Realist. The majority of people
criticize their ideas at the Dreamer stage and not only block the idea generation process, but kill the
ideas to o ear ly. Often the idea may so und cr azy at the beg inning , but with slig ht mo dificatio n o r in
combination with other ideas may lead to a successful business.

In 1943 Edwin Land to o k a pictur e o f his 3-year -o ld daug hter. She asked, “Dad, why can’t I see the
picture that you have taken right away?” Edwin thought about how to make this idea a reality and in 4
years the first Polaroid camera was released. Had the daughter of Edwin Land known why pictures
co uldn’t be made instantaneo usly o r had Edwin discar ded her idea instantly instead o f fir st thinking
about how to make it a reality, the world would never have seen Polaroid.

Whenever yo u think abo ut ideas always separ ate dr eaming and judg ing . These two pr o cesses do n’t
get along well. This simple thinking strategy can have a dramatic impact on the quantity and quality of
ideas that you generate.