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!"

webmaster@fedex.com [1]) 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.

alfry@mmm.com [2]) 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.

mheyde@ford.com [3]) was responsible for the engineering and planning of the 1999 Windstar, and oversaw the development of the "Windstar Moms" advertising campaign. She has been in charge of the Windstar, from concept to customer, since 1995. She is also the product manager for three other models: the Mercury Villager, the Ford Mustang, and the Ford Thunderbird.

cerfs-email@wcom.com [4]), together with Robert Kahn, devised TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), a set of standard protocols that serves as the common "language" of the Internet. TCP/IP enables networks to communicate with one another and to share information through "gateways" that process information according to a single standard.

tt@twylatharp.org [5]) was born in Portland, Indiana. Her mother, a piano teacher, began teaching Tharp how to play the piano when she was two. A dancer, choreographer, and director, Tharp has an inventive, spirited style that combines elements of jazz, tap, ballet, and modern dance. She has choreographed for the American Ballet Theatre, the Royal Ballet, and the Paris Opera Ballet, and she has collaborated with such artists as composers Philip Glass and David Byrne, and film director Milos Forman (on "Hair," "Ragtime," and "Amadeus"). In 1985, Baryshnikov by Tharp, which aired on PBS, earned Tharp two Emmy Awards. And in 1992, she received a MacArthur Fellowship "genius grant."

apenzias@nea.com [6]) won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering, with Robert Wilson, staticlike radiation that provided watershed evidence of the Big Bang. He was vice president of research at Bell Labs from 1981 until 1995, when he became chief scientist at Lucent Technologies. He retired in 1998 and now mentors startup companies for New Enterprise Associates, a venture-capital firm.

engelbart@bootstrap.org [7]) debuted the first mouse -- his best-known invention -- at a San Francisco conference in 1968. At that same conference, he also demonstrated an array of visionary applications. The Bootstrap Institute (www.bootstrap.org [8]), which Engelbart founded with his daughter Christina, offers colloquiums, management seminars, consulting services, and educational publications and videotapes.

any1canfly@aol.com [9]) creates colorfully painted quilts that document the lives of African Americans by telling vivid stories of race, politics, and identity. She has turned some of her narratives into children's books, the first of which, "Tar Beach" (Crown Publishers, 1991), won a Caldecott Honor Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration. Ringgold's work can be viewed in many museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Learn more about Ringgold on the Web
(www.artincontext.org/artist/ringgold [10]).

info@burton.com [11]) left Manhattan -- and a potential career on Wall Street -- shortly after college, and founded Burton Snowboards in Vermont in 1977. That company now dominates the snowboard industry. Burton prefers to call himself a "pioneer," rather than an inventor. (For the record, Burton did not invent the snowboard; there are snowboards that date back to the 1920s. The other major snowboard pioneer is Tom Sims, of Sims Snowboards, in Seattle.) Snowboarding has fast become a popular sport: In 1998, roughly 3.6 million snowboarders took to the slopes of the United States.