Creativity leads to useful items

We take many everyday items for granted, but when these items were introduced to the market, they were anything but ordinary.

Consider these items, born of necessity, in the not-so-distant past.

Josephine Dickson, an inexperienced cook, often burned and cut herself back in 1920. Her husband, Earle Dickson, was a Johnson & Johnson employee, and got plenty of practice in hand bandaging. Out of concern for his wife’s safety, he began to prepare bandages ahead of time. By combining a piece of surgical tape and a piece of gauze, he fashioned the first crude adhesive strip bandage.

At 15 years old, Chester Greenwood’s head was cold one December day in 1873. To protect his ears while ice skating, he found a piece of wire, and with his grandmother’s help, padded the ends. In the beginning, his friends laughed at him. However, when they realized that he was able to stay outside skating long after they had gone inside, freezing, they stopped laughing. Instead, they began to ask Chester to make ear covers for them, too.

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During the hot summer of 1912, Clarence Crane, a chocolate-candy manufacturer, found himself facing a dilemma. When he tried to ship his chocolates to candy shops in other cities, they melted into gooey blobs. His customers didn’t want to deal with the mess and deferred their orders until cooler weather. Mr. Crane needed to find a substitute for the melted chocolates if he wanted to keep his customers. He experimented with hard candy, which wouldn’t melt during shipment. Using a machine designed for making medicinal pills, Crane produced small, circular candies with a hole in the middle. And that is how Life Savers were born.

The term “Frisbee” did not always refer to the flying, plastic discs that have spawned a variety of games. More than 100 years ago, in Bridgeport, Conn., William Russell Frisbie owned the Frisbie Pie Co. and delivered his pies locally. All of his pies were baked in the same type of 10-inch round tin with a raised edge, wide brim and “Frisbie’s Pies” embossed on the bottom. Playing catch with the tins soon became a popular local sport. However, the tins were slightly dangerous when a toss was missed. It became the Yale University custom to yell “Frisbie” when throwing a pie tin. In the ’40s, when plastic emerged, the pie-tin game was recognized as a manufacturable and marketable product. Now, Frisbee is a registered trademark of Wham-O Toys.

All those inventions started innocently enough, without great expectations. That kind of creativity will continue, with or without corporate backing and deadlines to bring a product to market.

But there are constant demands in companies to come up with newer, better, shinier, more in-demand products. Managers would be wise to consider the studies conducted by Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School and head of its Entrepreneurial Management Unit. She has explored creativity for nearly 30 years, and her comprehensive research has uncovered some myth-defying facts:

n Money and rewards don’t necessarily inspire creativity.

n Tight deadlines and pressure to produce don’t foster innovation.

n Competition doesn’t induce creativity.

n Neither sadness nor fear fuel creative breakthroughs.

In order for creativity to blossom, workers need to feel deeply engaged in their projects, skilled enough to accomplish them, and free of negative influences.

I might add that management needs to be open to ideas from all sources. We all have a streak of creativity in us. Remember that next time you need a Band-Aid or enjoy a Life Saver! n

Mackay’s Moral: A little spark can lead to a blazing success.

Harvey Mackay is the author of the New York Times best-seller “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.” He can be reached through his website, www.harveymackay.com.

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