Here's an Idea!

In an economy based on innovation -- an economy in which you can win big just by outthinking the competition -- those three words form what might be the most important phrase in business. But what does it take to come up with an idea? How can some people and some organizations generate a seemingly endless supply of ideas, while others struggle to come up with anything fresh, creative, or out of the ordinary? We put that question to some of the most innovative minds in the world -- inventors, artists, writers, business-model makers -- and guess what they all said? "Here's an Idea!"

Frederick W. Smith

Chairman, President, and CEO
FedEx Corp.
Memphis, Tennessee

There are two keys to innovation. The first is the ability to think beyond relatively conventional paradigms and to examine traditional constraints using nontraditional thinking. You have to be able to go outside your own frame of reference and find another way to look at a problem. Before I founded Federal Express, overnight delivery didn't exist on a national scale. My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to the transportation business. Using a central clearinghouse, along with a hub-and-spoke system of dissemination, enabled us to deliver, point-to-point, anywhere in the United States -- absolutely, positively overnight.

The second key to innovation is the ability to discern the important issues and to keep your real goal in view. I don't think that we understood our real goal when we first started Federal Express. We thought that we were selling the transportation of goods; in fact, we were selling peace of mind. When we finally figured that out, we pursued our goal with a vengeance. We provided each of our drivers with a handheld computer and a transmitting device. We made it possible for our customers to track their packages right from their desktops. Companies get into real trouble when they see a means as an end -- when they fail to change their business processes: That's when some interloper comes along and does it for them.

Frederick W. Smith (webmaster@fedex.com) first proposed the idea of overnight delivery in a paper that he wrote as an undergraduate at Yale University. (The now-famous paper earned him only a C from his
professor.) Smith founded Federal Express in 1971, and he is now chairman, president, and CEO of the $17 billion company. FedEx Corp. delivers nearly 5 million packages worldwide each business day.

Art Fry

Corporate Scientist
3M
Saint Paul, Minnesota

Innovation requires a fresh way of looking at things, an understanding of people, and an entrepreneurial willingness to take risks and to work hard. An idea doesn't become an innovation until it is widely adopted and incorporated into people's daily lives. Most people resist change, so a key part of innovating is convincing other people that your idea is a good one -- by enlisting their help, and, in doing so, by helping them see the usefulness of the idea.

When I first started telling people about my idea for Post-it Notes, no one understood what I was talking about. People had never heard of a "repositionable note," and they couldn't conceive of such a phenomenon. So, of course, no one believed that there was a market for it. Formal research showed a potential for only about $750,000 worth of business. I had to launch my own campaign to get the project off the ground. I gave away repositionable notes to secretaries and other key people in the company, and I kept track of usage and feedback. If someone felt that the notes were unnecessary, then I'd stop giving away samples to that person. Within a short time, everyone realized how much they had come to rely on those notes: They had become addicted to them.

We went through the same process in marketing Post-it Notes. At first, advertising didn't work -- because people had no idea what the product was. I had to plead with management not to kill the idea. In the end, we marketed the notes by giving out samples. We realized that people had to try the product in order to appreciate it.

Art Fry (alfry@mmm.com) came up with the idea for Post-it Notes during church-choir practice. It's a story that has become almost a legend in the annals of innovation: The scraps of paper that he used to mark his hymnal would constantly fall out, and he felt the need for a more cooperative bookmark. At the time, he was working in new-product development for the retail-tape division of 3M and had been trying to figure out what to do with a new, low-tack adhesive that a coworker, Spencer Silver, had invented. The result, Post-it Notes, celebrates its 20th birthday this month.