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What
is a "Silly" Idea?
| "The best
thing since sliced bread"
Early in the 1900s, Otto Fredrick Rohwedder
had an idea for a bread-slicing machine. It took
26 years for his idea to catch on in America,
and not until 1928 did Wonder Bread finally introduce
sliced and wrapped bread using his idea. In just
5 years, however, almost 80% of all bread was
sold this way. |
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Ideas Can Come From Anywhere
The next time you're in a store as K-mart or Wal-Mart,
take a look around. You may be thinking, "I
always look around when I'm there." But this
time, look around in a new way. Look at each product
you see on the shelves and racks and think about what
they were before they ended up there. All of them, you
can assume, were ideas that eventually took form in
someone's head. Now, how did the idea make it to the
shelves?
Some products are the results of design teams at established
companies. Some were created from ideas licensed from
Inventors and Entrepreneurs like you. Ideas can come
from anywhere, even from children.
Do
you like my idea?
Our representatives are often asked this question
by inventors. We say it is not relevant if one
or all of us likes it. If two people walk through
a store together, one would see things that he
like that the other doesn't like and vice versa.
A product will succeed as long as enough people
like it and/or need it enough of the time to keep
it going. People often bring up the "pet
rock" phenomenon. The pet rock was
successful, yes, but for a short time. Have you
noticed a big demand for them in the past 20 years?
Some items will have short-lived success, others
will become staples that people buy again and
again. |
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| Some people are afraid
to pursue their inventions because they think it's
simple or silly. They must not have been in a store
lately. There are things out there that people are
buying that are very simple. Some of the inventors
of these things may have called them silly, too…all
the way to the bank! |
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