Business Opportunities Weblog

June 28, 2006 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

Fast Company:

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….

In Ideas | 0 Comments