Sergey and Larry tried to sell Google for a couple of million bucks so they could stay in school. Nobody bought it.

Execs at Nike thought the Air Max was a terrible idea. 

Internally, people thought Gmail was a joke and a distraction from their core business.

Steve Jobs didn’t want to have an App Store. 

The U.S. Navy wouldn’t fund radar because they didn’t see the point.

Steve Ballmer thought the iPhone was so ridiculous he laughed at it in an interview.

Martin Goodman at Marvel thought Spiderman was a crap idea.

Xerox invented ethernet, the GUI and interpress but took none of them to market.

None of these people or organizations are stupid, obviously. In fact far from it. 

It’s just that in reality almost every bold start up or product idea is deemed idiotic until it isn’t, what makes a new product or innovation a hit is usually only obvious in retrospect, and we cannot analyse or strategize our way to success because we cannot predict the future.

That’s why — contrary to what academics, keyboard warriors and intellectuals will tell you — when it comes to new product development or genuine innovation the approach that works best in the real world is simply to experiment: try ideas out and see if they work. It’s the only way to know for sure.

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