In 1956, the Webster's Dictionary came out with a great idea. Or so several people there thought - an "Assemble it yourself" dictionary! The idea was to somehow save costs. Maybe back then, the bindery process cost more than it does now.Anyhow, I'd wager that they didn't sell very many. I happened upon a box full of never-assembled pages in Heather's parents' basement (as we were moving them to a smaller place last summer). They had inherited it from her grandparents. No one ever assembled the thing. And now it's going into a recycling bin.
Your takeaway? What idea have you been working on that should not see the light of day? Be ruthless and kill it off.
I have to mention our friends at GM. They lost $38 billion in 2007. Not enough people there were saying "no" to bad ideas. (By the way, Ford only lost $2.7 billion and Chrysler $3 billion in 2007.) And now it may be too late for them. Or at least it's too late for the how-ever-many thousands of motor industry employees who will lose jobs because their bosses didn't say no.
