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The Birth of a New Workforce: 21st-Century Strategies That Will Revolutionize Your Business
For sometime now, we’ve had a special project in the works. We wanted to give our listeners and readers a chance to hear a new Why Didn’t I Think of That?® feature every day, even if they’re away from the radio. And that’s exactly what we’ve done. Today marks the beginning phases of a plan [...]
Nobody thought about putting paint in an aerosol can until Ed Seymour. In 1949, Seymour was looking for a novel way to demonstrate a new aluminum paint. His wife suggested putting it in an aerosol can, like ones recently introduced for insecticides. To his surprise, the sprayer — not the paint — became the star of his demonstration.
While in Hawaii in the 1800′s, James Dole discovered a fruit most people had never seen or heard of before: The pineapple. He began importing the fruit to the mainland and introduced the country to this exotic, sweet treat. The pineapple became a national favorite, and the Dole Food Company became the largest supplier of fruits and vegetables in the world.
He started his first business in college. He sold his second business to Clear Channel. He came within four minutes of winning CBS’s the Amazing Race. He’s led an interesting life, but what Blake Mycoskie is best known for is starting TOMS Shoes, the company that has donated well over a million shoes to needy men, women, and children.
Today it’s as synonymous with sports as cheerleaders or sweatbands. But not too long ago, Gatorade was just a nameless concoction, cooked up to revitalize the University of Florida’s football team: the Gators. The Gators were losing. A lot. One reason for that was the hot Florida weather dehydrating the players. The “Gator-Aid” not only saved the team, but it has been hydrating and refreshing some of the world’s greatest athletes ever since.
Today’s Hall of Fame Spotlight: The Story of Gatorade.
What they do:
Provide temporary staffing services to clients in 82 countries.
Inspiration:
When a law firm whose secretary was ill barely got a legal brief to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in time -- its partners got an idea. Why not create a side business offering companies temporary employees?
About the business:
From a “Work when you want, as long as you want” newspaper ad, Manpower was born. Within four years, they had offices in six cities offering typists, stenographers and bookkeepers to businesses. Four years later, they'd gone global. Today, Manpower International has grown from a $7,000 investment into a $22 billion-dollar corporation with 400-thousand clients in 82 countries.
It’s no secret that businesses and corporations are always looking forward. The next big product, the next big innovation, the next quarterly report. And yet, many businesses have histories as rich and fascinating as anything you’d find in a history book. Is there any money to be made in preserving your company’s legacy?
Sure, it only takes one company or product to revolutionize an industry, but selling people something they’ve never seen before isn’t easy. The general public tends to shy away from cutting edge technologies and trends, waiting for them to become more commonplace before adapting them. Your job is to change their minds. But how? Luckily, many before us have made bold, world-changing moves that have dramatically shifted the courses of industries, and made the people behind the companies filthy rich. One such example is Apple Computers.
It sounds an awful lot like an obscure Yiddish swearword. But Shpoonkle is a new service for finding legal advice that’s been called “Ebay for lawyers.”
Like so many of our stories, this tale begins with a phrase commonly uttered by a budding entrepreneur: “There must be a better way.”
Why would anyone just let people use their product… for free? Well, for Connecticut clockmaker Eli Terry, it was a matter of getting his product into the hands of people who might not have realized they wanted it.
