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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 83the crazy idea that people would want microwave ovens in their homes. Ignoring the laughter, they advertised for independent sales agents to sell the ovens door-to-door and at home parties, like Tupperware%u00ae parties. The success led to quickly designing a smaller, less bulky, less powerful, and more affordable microwave fit for the home, and the rest is history. You%u2019ve got one in your home. So does everybody else. A more contemporary example, a favorite of mine, is Steve Jobs%u2019s one creative idea: Similar to the microwave being sold only to restaurants, computers were sold only to businesses. Jobs saw it in the home. He had a second, linked creative idea that was really %u201cout there%u201d: to have his own retail stores selling only his computers. At the mall, wedged in between Victoria%u2019s Secret and Mr. Pretzel, a big Apple computer store! The entire industry laughed.How, you might ask, can this be applied to small business? I often tell the story of the jewelry store owner who opened a pop-up store at the racehorse auctions I often attend. Every other vendor there sells horse %u201cstuff %u201d: equipment, race sulkies, liniment. He is a fish out of water. But, when John promised his wife he was not going to buy another horse, but does, bringing home a diamond tennis bracelet with the new horse helps. The jewelry retailer has his pop-up store at every auction. He tells me he can do as much business there in two days as in two weeks in his mall stores, and with no discounting. Did he invent anything? No. Pop-up stores already existed. They were common. Vendors renting exhibit space at all sorts of events already existed. His jewelry store already existed. He just had one great creative idea, worth a fortune.If you happen to be the kind of person who births revolutionary breakthrough ideas, you%u2019d better face up to the reality of having to shelve the thinking cap, put on the work clothes, roll up your sleeves, and do a lot of uncreative, unfun work to turn it into something of value. If you are the kind of person who thinks you never have new ideas and haven%u2019t got a single creative gene in your DNA, you ought to take comfort in knowing that ideas alone are like unplanted seeds. What you can bring