Ideas and insights: thoughts and concepts that come to us

It was Thomas Alva Edison who said that invention was one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration. He was talking about making a mechanical device operate consistently, efficiently, and in an original way in order to qualify for the exclusive right to manufacture and sell the device; in short, to get a patent.

Ideas and insights—those thoughts and concepts that come to us when we are in the shower, driving the car, watching television, or invariably, in my case, when I am reading something—are a little different. Ideas and insights do not usually involve devices or mechanical systems that need to be developed, improved, or perfected. Rather, an idea or insight has to be nurtured to the point that questions about it can be answered and a clear path for bringing it to fruition can be identified. As a result, we think the Edison ratio of 99 to one changes to about 50% idea/insight and 50% implementation.

I have been creating and polishing ideas or having insights for the 40 years of my active business career as a graduate student, university instructor, Army intelligence officer, US diplomat, management specialist, and public policy consultant. The ideas have touched on commercial, social, cultural, and personal ideas; the insights end up touching on nearly all areas of life.

My hope today is to reflect on some of the ideas and insights I have developed. Some of them are captured in my latest book, What a Great Idea! It will not surprise you that it will be available to you after the talk for $15 including tax, shipping, and handling. Not only does it come to you today at a savings of about 25 percent, but I can authorgraph a copy for you. I am told that it makes easy reading, but it really makes a great gift for someone you know who is bursting to make his or her own ideas the next big thing in the marketplace.

Create something new

Let me start by offering the thoughts of Buckminster Fuller, one of the great architects and philosophers of our time. Fuller said:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

In short, create something new rather than tinker with something old. Wise words and perhaps the key lesson for today. Don't change what exists, make what exists seem new.

Now let's look at some ideas still worth pursuing: I call the first idea, REMEMBERING . . .

Only one aspect of a daily newspaper is not consistently presented on television. General news, of course, is a fixture of every station's programming and in the case of CNN, it is the only type of programming. Similarly, each major section of a daily newspaper-entertainment, sports, shopping, humor, the comics-all have multiple programs or whole television channels devoted to these topics. Letters to the editor? Any of the chat shows that encourage call-in comments from viewers fills the same purpose.

So what is the one piece from newspapers that has never been consistently cloned for television? OBITUARIES. Oh, yes, when someone of prominence dies—and provided there is tape or archival film to illustrate the story—then television can fall all over itself with stories and specials. But absent the availability of visuals, television usually fails to deal with death in a balanced way. Compare, for example, television coverage of Lucille Ball's death to that of three-term Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz. Ball and Heinz died in the same week. Ball's coverage was wall to wall; Heinz got a sentence. Yet, Heinz did interesting and valuable work—and probably influenced the lives of more people than Lucille Ball. He deserved more coverage than he got.

What would you think of a 30-minute magazine-style program that honors the special contributions and impact of the prominent, notable, and ordinary people who passed away during the previous week? The focus of a program called “Remembering . . .” would be on the contributions of the deceased. No film? Not a problem: Employ artists, cartoonists, chart and map makers, and other visual specialists to create the visuals to illustrate the words.

How refreshing: Visuals that enhanced the words spoken rather than visuals that have little to do with those words. Of course, a weekly show devoted only to those who pass away could not ignore a prominent person's passing, but by the same token this new show would not want to repeat everything the audience may have already seen on a network news or special program that already appeared.

The answer came to us in two different ways: First, when we saw a page full of editorial cartoons in a newspaper's year-end review of those who had passed away over the previous 12 months; and in pictures drawn by kids to express their sorrow at losing a loved one in the December, 2004, South Asian tsunami.

We thought both techniques could be particularly powerful in framing the single most important contribution or the one essential attribute for which a famous person who died ought to be remembered. So we determined that the death of a notable should be covered by showing how editorial cartoonists chose to depict the individual or how young kids decided to memorialize the importance of the individual's life. In the latter case, we suggested that all elementary school teachers be notified that the program would buy the artwork of kids whenever a prominent person passed away.

We suggested that if a kid's picture were e-mailed to the producers and used, he or she would receive $100 and his or her school an additional $150. Since no one would know until air time what pictures (if any) had been selected for broadcast, it was an idea that was sure to get the parents to watch and build the audience of the program over time. What a Great Idea!!

More about remembering

One final note about Remembering: This Week with George Stephanopoulos now uses obituaries as a standard element in a segment called “In Memoriam.” It demonstrates to us how differently we conceive of a program devoted to obituaries than the producers of the ABC program. When author Arthur Hailey died a few months ago, This Week devoted 90 seconds to segments from movies based on the books he had written; such as, Airport and Hotel.

The two segments featured Helen Hayes and Melvin Douglas and forced viewers to listen to their speeches as representations of Haley's ideas. In the process, however, viewers learned absolutely nothing of Hailey's impact, the themes that formed the body of his work, his contribution to American literature, and on and on—all the things that make obituaries interesting and worthwhile reading in a newspaper.