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CHAPTER 6 / MUST YOU INVENT? A POX ON CREATIVITYNO B.S. Guide to Succeeding in Business by Breaking All the Rules 81superior technology, new inventions, or innovative advantages. He did fundamental things very well. And got rich doing them.Whenever I talk with people about this, I point out Fred DeLuca%u2019s Subway chain. Is there anything more basic than a sub sandwich? Fred understood the magic of simplicity. While much of the fast-food industry wrestles with saturation issues, Subway franchises are proliferating like burger joints did in the 1950s. He opened his first store in 1965, at age seventeen, with a $1,000 loan. Now the Subway chain is second in number of outlets only to McDonald%u2019s, although much younger than McDonald%u2019s, and the race is on. And Subway doesn%u2019t even have its own %u201cspecial sauce.%u201d Something simple, ordinary, and uncreative: fresh cold cuts and toppings, fresh-baked rolls, convenient locations, and straightforward, product-driven advertising. Nothing here that any of thousands of independent mom-and-pop sub shop owners couldn%u2019t have done to turn their tiny businesses into global empires. No creativity required.Chipotle, incidentally, is Subway. You Need Only One Creative Thought to Get Rich; Two Just About Guarantees ItMy friend the late E. Joseph Cossman became quite famous in the world of marketing as the man who found one nearly dead or lazy product after another, inventions that never blossomed, bought certain distribution rights to them%u2014often for very small sums in advance of royalties%u2014and then made millions with each one. One right after another after another. In none of these big wins was new invention involved. Mostly, Joe had one creative thought about each one, seeing a different market or advertising and sales method for the product. I teach this as Place Strategy: moving a product to a different, un-obvious place of far greater opportunity than its present, obvious place. Joe%u2019s biggest success at this was with The Ant Farm. When he spotted it, it sold in very modest numbers, only through school supply houses, for use in biology classrooms.