Before you pitch your next big idea, remember the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. In the late 1970s, someone in the Army had a notion to build something that could transport 11-soldier squads into battle. Then the suggestions–and the chaos–started. Let’s add a roof! And a missile launcher! More armor! The result was a $13 billion development boondoggle and a $1.6 million vehicle that could carry only seven people. The Bradley, as described in the film The Pentagon Wars, was “a troop transport that can’t carry troops, a reconnaissance vehicle that’s too conspicuous to do reconnaissance, and a quasi-tank that has less armor than a snowblower.”For all the talk about how important ideas are in business, ideas are really a plentiful commodity. What’s scarce are the skills to get ideas through the myriad layers of bureaucracy that threaten to declaw, neuter, or bloat them beyond recognition.
Photo by Brian Van….
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