It’s often said that we shouldn’t live life life alone. The same goes for ideas.
More often than not making ideas work is a solo thing. But, partnering up with ideas can be the real game changer and work wonders for the end results. History shows it and proves it. In fact it’s what saved one of the biggest and most famous companies on the planet.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s Lego was the go-to plaything for children. Almost all kids from that era owned some or had built with some at home or school. They were the staple play toy for children everywhere, and they were everywhere. But times changed and so did preferences. The mid 80’s saw the advent of technological toys like robots and computer games and the business seemed headed for bankruptcy after a $23m loss.
They needed help. And they got that help with an ingenious partner. The Star Wars film franchise was launching The Phantom Menace and sought to engage a younger audience in sci-fi and its brand. Further instalments of the Star Wars story were planned and a new fan base would be needed through the years. They felt creating special Lego based kits would achieve just that.
And boy did it! The revenue kept Lego afloat and led them to creating new licencing tie-ins elsewhere and the business turned around. In 2024 it made 17.1 DKK (over £2.4billion) profit and sold 12% more products than the previous year. That’s what partnering ideas can do.
And they are not alone!
Eating ice cream in a Rolls.
In 1978 two school chums who hated gym but loved ice-cream decide to take a basic $5 correspondence course on their favourite food. Enjoying it so much they decided to give it a go and set about making ice-cream through using local Vermont ingredients they also loved. They survived their first harsh winter and soon word got around. The two guys with their flavoursome ice-cream with chunky ingredients (that they threw in day to day on their own whim) such as cookies and candy, began to become popular.
Within a decade they had opened 80 shop outlets in 18 American states. These two ice-cream creating fans were Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The world knows them as Ben & Jerry’s. When they sold the brand in 2000, the price tag was $326m. Two friends, one idea, one partnered success story.
Perhaps their ice-cream is considered a bit of a luxury. Well there’s another luxury item that we all love that never would have come about without a partnership. The Rolls Royce car.
Charles Royce was the son of a Lord and had an affluent background. He studied engineering and became an accomplished driver even breaking the world land speed record in 1903. He set up one of the first car dealerships to import cars to fund his driving escapades. The very opposite can be said of Henry Royce who was a working child from the age of nine. He managed to gain an apprenticeship with a railway company and loved all things engineering.
Royce began to build cars as he felt other designs were lacking in engineering. Rolls was also disappointed in the foreign cars he imported. Hearing of Royce a friend of Rolls invited the two to meet and in 1904 they sat down together for the first time. They hit it off. Royce agreed to make cars for his new friend who agreed to sell them exclusively through his car dealership. They both needed each other for what the other brought to the table.
We all know how that story turned out. Today Rolls Royce is worth a whopping $100.3 billion!! Not bad for two people who probably would never have done what they did without their joined union.
Who’s your other ideas half?
If you have been struggling along alone with an idea or business, then ask yourself, ‘Who can I partner up with’?
Who can be the Ben to your Jerry? The Rolls to your Royce? The Star Wars to your Lego?
Don’t look in the obvious. It could be an old friend. A person who simply seems to know what people think or like. Another business who you can meet in the middle to form something good for both of you. Or a fellow enthusiast who loves what you do but in a different way. Even someone in the bus queue. Get talking, get sharing with others, get connecting, get yourself closer to your partner in dream. You could be theirs too!
Two can become one and create one mega success. Two works wonders where one is trying to work things out.
Two heads and two ideas are better than one. And can be waaaaay bigger as well.
References – www.thisforthat.biz – ‘The partnership that saved LEGO’.
www.cbr.com – ‘How star wars saved LEGO’.
www.lego.com
www.unilver.co.uk – Ben & Jerry’s
www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com – how rolls met royce.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Stress.
Stress is the No.1 killer in the background. Heart disease, alcoholism, smoking related diseases and drug taking all stem from the stress in our lives and our attempts to get away from it. Stress is a negative force for humans. We need to talk about it here on SuperMind Saturday.
- Stress is classed as a mental reaction to perceived pressures upon us. These cause physiological changes in the body such as a raised heart rate, impaired thinking, and increased body temperature and sweating. This means stress itself DOESN’T EXIST. It’s our response that does. Should we therefore be approaching stress completely differently than we are because of this?
- American philosopher William James observed, ‘The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over the other’. That being true as stress severely impacts work, relationships, and the health service here’s an idea. Could we start training children at a young age how to manage thinking and mindset so they are prepared for it as adults? And make that part of schools curriculum?
- SuperMind Thought – Stress does not have a level. There is no official measurement system to gauge it. No-one knows a job’s designated level of stress merely a level of skills and requirements. What we need is a stress scale from mild bother to extreme like the Beaufort scale from a breeze to a fully fledged hurricane. This helps us make informed choices as to whether the salary is worth the pressure.
- We never talk about stress until it’s got its grip. We almost never expect it to be there but invariably it is, certainly at work. And yet, we all know it exists. Maybe employers should have a stress policy that is declared with job candidates before they apply. How would you make pre-stress awareness compulsory in work and life?
- On the other end of the scale, some stress is good for us. It pushes us to achieve, make better efforts, can keep us fit, and get out of us what nothing else would….or we would. What are the best positive stresses we should aim to experience?
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Do you experience good luck all time? Everything always coming up roses?
Or are you the opposite? That nothing remotely lucky ever happens to you.
It’s no surprise. Luck, actually, tends to be more of a belief that an actual blessing.
Professor Richard Wiseman, a well known TV and broadcasting psychologist, was highly interested in the whole subject of luck. In the early 1990’s he embarked on a ten year study into luck to see if people were truly lucky…..or not. He ran adverts in national papers asking for people to become involved in the study who believed they were either incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky.
From this 400 were chosen to embark on the luck factor research. His aim was to examine the actual beliefs and life story experiences of both sets of people to determine if there was any factor(s) that lay at the root of their luck/non luck. His study was in depth involving keeping diaries, completing questionnaires, and participating in experiments. This 10 year programme was the first and biggest of its kind in the world.
So, what did he find? Who exactly really does enjoy good luck?
Good Beliefs = Good Fortune.
Well, from the title of this post, you can probably work out the outcome.
His groundbreaking exercise and findings were shared in his best selling book, ‘The Luck Factor’.
His studies showed that people were as lucky as they believed themselves to be. This was underpinned by 4 key traits, namely –
- They create self-fulfilling predictions through positive expectations.
- They adopt a resilient attitude under all circumstances turning lesser luck into greater luck.
- They have become skilled at noticing and creating chance opportunities that they follow.
- They make beneficial decisions through trusting their intuition.
Putting the four together in one human led to one good turn of fortune after another. Let me share a perfect example.
Luck hangs around.
In ‘The Luck Factor’, Richard Wiseman tells the tale of Barnett Helzberg Jr who had built up a fairly successful jewellery business. He was now 60 years of age and wanted to sell the company and read the means by which famous investor Warren Buffett bought companies. He decided he was the man but didn’t know how to be able to have a conversation with him. That was still in his mind in 1994 in visiting New York when, by chance as he was walking past The Plaza Hotel, he heard a woman call out ‘Mr Buffett’.
Seeing the man she was referring to, there and then he decided to walk over to him and introduce himself. And guess what? It was indeed Warren Buffett. One year later he agreed a deal to buy all of Barnett’s stores and he retired a wealthy man.
And it works the other way round too.
Croation Frane Selak reputedly survived a train crash, plane crash, a bus crash into water, a car fire and explosion, a head on lorry smash, and being struck by a bus. Some don’t fully believe they all actually occurred they way he described but there is an interesting epilogue to the story. Selak did believe he was lucky and one story is undisputed. In 2010 in the last of his amazing life events, he won over £700,000 in the Croatian Lottery!
That’s what happens when you believe in luck. It kind of hangs around. And it darn well sticks too.
Your own story, like those above, has been your life. And has that story been a lucky one? If not then it’s probably that you didn’t think and believe in all things lucky being a lifelong counterpart with you to the end. You can change that today.
Because good luck is in your head before it’s in your life.
References – Richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf
Wikipedia – Frano Selak.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Wokeism.
Of all the subjects that divide people, this is one of the most talked about in today’s world. It’s a phrase coined to define society’s move to be more inclusive and fair but also the feelings and opinions that go with that. It’s definitely stirring things up in society. And that firmly interests me at SuperMind Saturday as I pose some questions about it to get us all thinking.
- Wokeism is a catch all title. It’s used to denote how the world has shifted from a place that favoured some groups over others and to get us to reflect on our historical behaviours. History though can’t be changed, only understood. There seems to be a never ending stream of past events and periods that many are now being asked to apologise for. Plus accusations that come with them. If we are trying to create a better world is anti history useful or is it the future we should now really be focused on?
- Elon Musk said, ‘At it’s heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful’. Strong words. But they do lead to a crucial question. What does truly lie at the heart of wokeism?
- Wokeism is just another label. In itself it sounds a harsh term for the moral change that lies behind it to some degree. Labels can influence our opinions both positively and negatively. Therefore, is there a better term/label that can explain this modern change in culture?
- Top of the list with wokeism is how many people use the ‘I’m offended’ card to remove or cease something they personally don’t like. The powers that be in the media, scared to lose viewers, readers, or most chiefly, income, have seemed to follow suit. Often the offended person/people is in a very small minority numbers wise. Should we now be creating an official definition of offense so that anything classed as offensive is clear rather than individualistic?
- Observation – The world is fast changing. The old accepted ways are rapidly being superseded by different expected standards, values, and behaviours. Maybe older people are holding onto a world that no longer exists. Maybe younger generations are trying to force their version of the world onto society too quickly? And maybe, like all previous human behaviour change, perhaps we should see it all as a storm in a teacup that in the years ahead will slip into an adjustment we are all comfortable with.
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Many people have a good idea.
Every single day the world over someone thinks up a good idea for a product, service, device, or system.
But that’s also where most ideas stop. Or stop very soon after. Their concept looked plausible on paper or in their mind, but in the real world it didn’t quite work or fit or meet the need it was designed for. And right there and then it died a death never to see the light of day.
That is the last thing anyone should do. A good idea is a good idea, it just may not have been the right time or found it’s rightful home.
Not Milking Success.
In the early 1970’s in the UK, the Milk Marketing Board, an agency set up to manage milk production and distribution four decades before, planned an ad campaign to promote milk drinking as a cost effective health booster for the population during a time of soaring inflation and cuts.
The ad agency WCRS was contracted to create ideas for the promotions. After some research they felt the focus should be on the working male population with ads showing men in various roles who had drunk milk first. Their tag line was, ‘I bet he drinks milk’. The Milk Marketing Board however didn’t take the idea forwards, as other preferred concepts were explored.
Now that wasn’t the end of that. WCRS liked the strap line so kept it on hold for a possible future use.
Roll on a decade. WCRS were approached by Carling Breweries to help increase the market share of their Black Label lager. They wanted it to have a more ‘cool’ and appealing look. An easily remembered slogan that would hook in interest was needed. And guess who already had that?
A range of adverts were launched in 1983 with two men watching another man doing something impressive or skilful before adding, ‘I bet he drinks Carling Black Label’. The connection from drinking Carling to being a hip, popular guy was made. Gone was milk and in was Carling.
The result? Within 18 months it was the UK’s best selling draught beer and would remain so for the next two decades.
That’s what happens when you hold onto an idea.
That’s a wrap.
The best ideas not only might have to wait for success, they also need using elsewhere.
In 1957 Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes tried to create a textured wallpaper for the new young music generation and the interior fashions they were buying. Sealing shower curtains through heat disappointed them as it only resulted in a see through film with trapped bubbles in. In fact they ended up with several patents for their idea and thought of hundreds of uses for it, but none worked.
Three years later with a product seemingly of little value, they decided to offer it for packaging for various industries as the bubbles within would at least prevent friction and damage. The product took off as its first major buyer was IBM who used it to protect their new computers when they were shipped. Bubble Wrap as we know it was born. At the turn of this century it had sales of over £3 billion per year.
You have to wonder what could have also happened to all the myriad of ideas that were left on the shelf because they didn’t come up to scratch at first.
So, take a look at your own ideas you ‘put away for another day’ or in a drawer gathering dust.
They may not be a dud but a dynamo waiting to go.
And don’t forget yourself – the idea you’ve always had about who you are may only need sharpening up so that the world responds to it. Why?
Because the best ideas are best kept as one day they may be the best for your life and future.
References – ‘Smithsonian.com/innovation/accidental-invention-bubble-wrap’.
Channel 5 – ‘Britain’s Favourite Ads of the 70’s and 80’s’.
