82 The leader’s guide to lateral thinking skills

suggestions; that works out at over 30 suggestions per worker per

year. The most remarkable statistic from Toyota is that over 90 per cent
of the suggestions are implemented. Quantity works (Cox, 2001: 100).
Thomas Edison was prolific in his experiments. He said, ‘Genius is 1
per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.’ His development of
the electric light took over 9000 experiments and that of the storage cell
around 50,000. He still holds the record for the most patents – over
1090 in his name. After his death 3500 notebooks full of his ideas and
jottings were found. It was the prodigiousness of his output that led to
so many breakthroughs. Picasso painted over 20,000 works. Bach
composed at least one work a week. The great geniuses produced
quantity as well as quality. Sometimes it is only by producing the
many that we can produce the great.
A more recent example of an artist producing many works and
varied forms is Madonna. Not only has she written and produced
many songs, she has reinvented herself many times. She has not been
satisfied with success in one style but has constantly experimented
with new forms. She has portrayed herself as a material girl, a virgin, a
feminist on the blonde ambition tour, an exaggerated sex object, a gay
icon, a classical actress in Evita, a mother and so on. Each venture
represented a risk that she would alienate her fan base, but the risks
have paid off as she has stayed at the forefront while more conven-
tional artists have slipped from the public’s consciousness.
When you siphon water from one point to a lower point, the water
flows up first before it flows down. Sometimes an idea has to go to a
silly level before it can reach a workable level. A company that packed
china vases for transit used newspapers as the packing material. The
problem they had was that the packers, as they picked the newspapers
to screw into balls, would often stop to read interesting articles that
they spotted. Various solutions were tried but it seemed that with the
boring nature of the packing work it was impossible to stop workers
being distracted by the articles. A brainstorm session was held, and
one manager suggested the idea of poking the eyes out of the
employees to stop them reading. This rather nasty and impossible idea
triggered a good idea from another person in the session. Why not
employ blind people? The company did this and found that blind
people were keen to do the work and made excellent packers. The