Beyond the Obvious: Hidden Assets

 In today’s business environment of rapid change, the typical product must be improved, reinvented or replaced every 18 months. Today’s hot seller will be tomorrow’s obsolete has-beens.   Over 20,000 new food products are introduced into the U.S. market every year. Less than five percent of them become successful and even less become super products. Over seven million patents were granted last year.

The majority of the products are never manufactured, and of the very few that are brought to market, even fewer break even or generate a profit.   Is the astronomical failure rate of new products due to bad ideas? Certainly not. Thousands, even tens of thousands of those new products are excellent ideas, but potential investors and corporate executives could not see the possibilities of success. Often a great idea appears to be a failure because the inventor created the product or service for a specific purpose and he can’t see beyond that purpose.An excellent example is the candy, “Pop Rocks,� one of the biggest selling candies in American history. In 1956, a General Foods chemist, William Mitchell, was looking for a way to make instant carbonated soda pop by trapping carbon dioxide in hard candy tablets. Some time after Mitchell discovered the new products he popped a few of the little rocks into his mouth and felt the unusual popping. After presenting the new product to General Foods executives, no one could think of how to use the new product. It didn’t make soda pop. The product was shelved for 19 years. Then in 1975, a General Foods executive saw the failed instant soda pop rocks in a new and different way. They were then marketed as the legendary Pop Rocks candy. Between 1975 and 1980 over 500 million packets of Pop Rocks were sold. The inventor, William Mitchell missed fame, and General Foods lost 19 years of incredible profits.Is there a “Pop Rock� at your company just waiting to be rediscovered? Do you have a great idea for a new product or service that didn’t really click? Try looking at these has-been ideas in a new and different way. How else could the idea be used? What other markets might be possibilities?  Look beyond the obvious. Learn to see old things in new ways and you will become a creative genius. Do you think my idea of three legged panty hose has possibilities?