A well-known company recruits business executives, and the exam topic is to sell combs to monks. An applicant replied: "I can find the abbot and say to him,' unkempt appearance is disrespectful to the Buddha, so we should put some combs in front of the incense table for good men and women to comb their hair." So the abbot will definitely buy my comb. The company sent him to the abbot, and the applicant sold 1 combs. Another applicant went to the temple and sold 5 combs at a time. It turned out that he said to the abbot, "People who come in to burn incense and worship Buddha are very devout. Your temple should give something as a souvenir and encourage them to do more good deeds. The words' Jishan comb' engraved on it will definitely be popular, and the incense in your temple will certainly flourish." Finally, the applicant became the business director of the company.
Monks didn't use combs originally, but this clever candidate was able to get monks to spend money on 5 combs. His courage to break away from conventional thinking is an important factor for success.
Hilton, the world's richest man and hotel king, said, "A piece of pig iron worth $5 can be worth $1.5 after being cast into horseshoes, more than $3, if it is made into industrial magnetic needles and the like, and as much as $25, if it is made into watch clockwork." Deliberating carefully is really a golden advice for investment and business.
There was a man in Shenyang who made a living as a garbage collector. One day, he had a whim: he only earned a few cents by collecting a can. If it is melted and sold as a metal material, can it be sold for more money? So he cut an empty can into pieces, melted it into a nail-sized silver-gray metal, and then spent 6 yuan doing tests at the Municipal Institute of Nonferrous Metals. Someone told him that it was a very valuable aluminum-magnesium alloy. He calculated an account: at that time, the price of aluminum ingots on the market was between 14, yuan and 18, yuan per ton, each empty can weighed 18.5 grams, and 54, pieces were one ton.
Selling materials costs six or seven times more than selling cans. So he decided to recycle cans for smelting. In order to attract people to sell empty cans, he raised his recycling price from a few cents to 14 cents, and printed the recycling price and the designated purchase point on the card and distributed it to all the junk collectors.
after a week, the man rode his bicycle to the designated place and was surprised: many trucks were waiting for him, all of which were filled with empty cans. On this day, he recovered more than 13,, which was two and a half tons. He immediately set up a metal recycling factory. In this way, in one year, he refined more than 24 tons of aluminum ingots with empty cans, and earned 2.7 million yuan in three years. He jumped from a "scavenger" to a millionaire.
A man who collects garbage for a living becomes a millionaire because he is diligent in thinking and turns waste into treasure. Everyone's innovation may produce endless charm. There is no shortage of people who can work, but people who can think.
Akio Morita, one of the founders of Sony, is a man who likes thinking and actively innovates in technology. He often uses brand-new research ideas to make Sony take the lead in the same industry in the world by virtue of its unique development system and strong technical support ability. At the same time, new technologies and products are constantly introduced. Within the company, the business philosophy of "research makes it different" and the style of diligent thinking and active innovation enable Sony to lead the trend and stay at the forefront forever.
After Sony made some progress and expanded its influence, Akio Morita began to lead Sony to develop its own new generation of leading products. At first, they chose the steel wire recorder as the development direction of the company's new leading products, but in practice, they found that it was impossible to buy magnetic steel that met the requirements of tape recorders in Japan and it was difficult to produce recording steel wires. Although he couldn't buy magnetic steel that met the requirements of tape recorders, Akio Morita didn't give up. He keenly felt that with the accelerating pace of modern life and the further improvement of people's lives, people's demand for tape recorders would be increasing, and its market space would be very broad. Just as the leadership of the company has been thinking about how to break through the limitation of raw material supply and continue to study wire recorders, an accidental opportunity made them change their minds. One day, Masaru Ibuka, one of the founders of the company, saw a tape recorder in the Japan Broadcasting Association. This kind of recorder not only has low noise and good sound quality, but also is smaller than a steel wire recorder. He immediately realized that the tape recorder would quickly replace the wire recorder and become the main recording tool.
Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita immediately decided not to develop steel wire recorders, but to develop tape recorders. However, the road to develop tape recorders is not smooth. They first encountered the problem of spending 5, yen to buy technology patents. At that time, 5, yen was astronomical, but they had to go all out to open the market and occupy a decisive position in a certain product production field. But when they solved the funds for purchasing patents, the tape recorder they worked so hard to produce was ignored. Because the purchasing power of most Japanese people was still very low at that time, the main part of their income could only be used to survive. A tape recorder with a price of 16, yen was a luxury for most Japanese people. But only when products enter the market and reach consumers, can the conversion from production capital to monetary capital be completed, and the success of marketing determines the fate of the company.
after careful analysis and market research, the company believes that in the short term, the sales target should be those units that have the purchasing power and need tape recorders.
with the new marketing ideas, the sales will open up immediately. News agencies, restaurants, shops and even judicial departments and procuratorates have a large number of orders. The company improved its products in time, miniaturized the tape recorder, took advantage of the opportunity of popularizing audio-visual education in Japanese schools at that time, and successfully entered the field of education. In this way, the company's development began to enter a virtuous cycle stage.
One day, retired Masaru Ibuka came to Akio Morita's office with a portable tape recorder and a pair of headphones, complaining: I like listening to music, but I don't want to influence others, and I can't sit still all day and want to walk around, so I have to carry this heavy tape recorder. Masaru Ibuka's complaints inspired Akio Morita's imagination: Yes! A compact portable single player should be developed. In that way, young people who like listening to music and old people who have nothing to do at leisure will definitely like it very much.
Akio Morita does what he says, although many people in the company are satisfied with the status quo and are unwilling to take risks to develop this portable machine for listening to music. However, Akio Morita, who likes innovation, pushed through the crowd and said that he should bear the responsibility for failure. As a result, in June, 1979, Sony officially introduced the Walkman product to the market. Its sound quality is clear and fidelity, and its style is small and exquisite. The price of 3, yen is also suitable for young people's pockets. "Walkman" quickly became popular in the Japanese market, and then it became popular in the international market. At the same time, "Walkman" also promoted Sony's earphone production, making them among the largest earphone manufacturers in the world, accounting for half of the Japanese market.
a small Sony "Walkman" suddenly changed the habit of listening to music for most people all over the world and changed their leisure style. Some famous music conductors, such as Seiji Ozawa, Karachang and Zubin Mehta, also like the Walkman. "Walkman" not only brought huge economic benefits to Sony, but also brought a high reputation. And all this is because of Akio Morita, who is diligent in thinking and dare to innovate.
Darwin once said: "Resilience is also a fighting capacity, and it is also an important fighting capacity. It is not the most powerful or intelligent species that can survive, but the most fickle species. " This resilience is mainly manifested in the ability to innovate when dealing with things, and innovation is the most powerful support for rapid development. Jack Welch said: "In the current competitive new economic era, lack of innovation and lack of progress is a very dangerous signal for an entrepreneur." Innovation means that when dealing with things, you can bravely break through the shackles of conventional thinking and put forward new and unique ideas and methods, which is a creative way of thinking. In the process of constantly asking questions, innovation is of great significance, and diligent thinking is an essential quality for innovators.
Thinking and innovation are the soul of a nation's progress, the inexhaustible motive force for a country's prosperity, and the source of a person's career. Lack of thinking and innovation in doing things can only do one thing right at most, but not one thing well. Therefore, if we want to improve the efficiency of doing things, we must have the consciousness of diligent thinking, active innovation and the courage to be the first.