Tuesday, December 15, 2009

When Big Isn't Big Enough

Picture your drive way with 80,000 rubber squids dropped on the driveway by a delivery truck the size of Kentucky. How would you move them all?

Let me introduce you to Steve Spangler a science aficionado. He loves to share the fun of science with teachers and kids around the world. He creates experiments that explode and makes science an art to be explored. Check him out at stevespanglerscience.com.

Steve is a good example of how thinking small but pushed to big gets awesome results. See Steve decided to create some small rubber squids for his science activity SQUIDYtm. He set about to get a mold made and when told he had to buy in quantity, he agreed. For after all, how hard could it be to sell 500 of them?

What he didn't expect was 80,000 of them dropped at his driveway with a $20,000 price tag to be paid in 30 days.

This "error" forced Steve to think far bigger than he originally planned. Today his experiments are in 1,000 stores and over 20,000 educational catalogs worldwide.

All because Steve couldn't "afford" to sit on this quantity. He needed to make money fast so he could pay the $20,000 invoice.

When do you think too small? In what ways are you trying to play it safe and be in the 500 quantity range rather than in the 80,000 Oh-my-gosh-what-are-we-going-to-do range?

Live large rather than just playing safe!

Anne Warfield
More on becoming innovative by Anne Warfield