Page 55 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

from The Mu.. Ni .in to poke tun ithinagert, or his orga PROF,
nization. I le rewrote the song along these line. Trouble. 501V
We've got trouble right here in River City. It starts with an m
and ends with a t, it's management. Yes sir, trouble right 41
here in River City." I le secretly distributed copies of his song
to his fellow employees and to top management. An inves-
tigation followed, and two especially bad managers were
replaced.

9/5. LISTING COMPLAINTS

One effective way of uncovering problems is to have em-
ployees, customers, or other constituents brainstorm a list of
complaints, either individually or in groups. (See Chapter 5
for a description of brainstorming.) Another version of this
approach is to have employees list stumbling blocks that they
have encountered. 9

10/6. RESPONDING TO SOMEONE ELSE

Sometimes people bring you problems or opportunities that
deserve careful consideration even if they seem farfetched.
In some businesses this happens quite often. Stories abound
of cases in which people have failed to recognize the poten-
tial of ideas brought to them by others. As noted in Chapter
1, George Lucas took the "Star Wars" idea to twelve movie
studios before Fox decided to produce it. IBM, General Mo-
tors, and DuPont were all offered the xerography idea and
rejected it as impossible and unnecessary. So Chester Carlson
and his associates went into business for themselves and
became multimillionaires. Victor Kiam was offered a chance
to buy Velcro for $25,000 but failed to see its potential. Velcro
applications were estimated to have had a total of $6 billion
in sales from inception to 1988. 10

The moral of these stores: Listen to others. Envision the
possibilities.

I 1/7. ROLE PLAYING

Role playing requires you to pretend you are someone else.
You may role play with another person in an interactive learn-
ing situation much like a play, or by simply imagining an-
other person's situation and walking throtiO it in your mind.