Chapter 8. The Improvement Urge

It is paradoxical that much as new ideas are wanted, nothing in this world is more resisted than a new idea. The clergy itself opposed many forward advances-even such a commonplace of today as forks. Fingers were made before forks, they said. Even educated persons for a long time discouraged bathing, on the assumption that the body was mortal and to be despised and that this life was only a preparation for the life to come. Why wash this miserable body which holds the soul away from heaven? they wanted to know. Similarly, they also discouraged any science of medicine. They expected cures to be effected by religious rites alone. The first manufacturer of baby carriages was considered sacrilegious for designing a substitute for feminine arms which the Creator had expressly made to carry infants.

As far as profit from an idea is concerned it should also be noted that the new thing should not be too different from anything that has gone before. People will change their methods only gradually, not radically. They may accept something totally new if it is a "first" such as radio when there had been no radio before. But they are slow to accept an automobile with the works at the back instead of at the front, even though such a design is available and very efficient.

The creative person is a pathfinder. By the very nature of the term he creates what does not previously exist. But people have gotten along without this new thing, whatever it may be. They are accustomed to their well tried methods, and even a much better method means the forming of new habits and new adjustments-the discarding of old equipment and its replacement with something else.

This matter of equipment is particularly pernicious in matters of revolutionary industrial inventions. As long as a great corporation is making profit on its present equipment, it will be very slow indeed to throw it all in the discard for something requiring totally new equipment unless, perchance, a competitor does it. Thus it is that many fine inventions are acquired by these corporations for a song, and merely shelved to keep the inventor quiet and prevent him from enlightening a competitor.

In addition, there is the apathy and inertia of the average person. People prefer the old familiar road. Profit in wealth or applause does not necessarily follow when you have discovered a good short cut. You must convince the possible users that it is worth their readjustment to it. Indeed you are more apt to become a successful business man or writer or even inventor if you are not too original. The experience of those who were too far ahead of their time has been to win a reward consisting chiefly of ridicule. The word, original, includes a meaning of eccentric, odd, queer. This is if you are original and purposeful. If you merely wander off the conventional path for the sake of being individual without benefit of purpose, you may find yourself where others are not, and little other satisfaction. For all these reasons, do not try to be too original.

Most of our ideas come from someone else. They are passed on to us, often half ideas. We carry a great burden of foolish and curious conceptions of what is of worth, moral, right, lasting, that does not stand scientific scrutiny. Many of our opinions are prejudices. Ideas were put over upon our forebears by witch doctors and others of that ilk. Today ideas are being put over on us, for better or worse, for social or selfish purposes, mostly by those who are paid to do it. Some of the most vicious ideas "take", while we remain impervious to some of the most worthy. Often sinister propaganda succeeds in getting more power behind it than does the beneficial.

On the whole, people tend to accept things as they are, view them in an unillumined, stodgy fashion, and approach nothing with that dynamic improvement urge which is the basis for constructive imagination. As long as we remain Fenced in by precedents and afraid of anything unusual or unpredictable, there is little hope for us. Life grows truly interesting, alive and glowing, when we put our constructive imaginations into action. Chiefly courage and resistance to inertia are essential to the original creative thinker. Other qualities and conditions outside him, determine whether [is work shall be permitted to be a valuable contribution to society. As Victor Hugo put it, there is nothing quite so powerful in the world as an idea whose time has come.

However, meantime, we live in an age in which superflu-3us ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking. If one is really going to cultivate the development of ideas, would it not be a plus value to strive for ideas that have significance-ideas that are not merely different for the sake of substituting one foolishness for another?

Always remember that the final combination which you develop from your recombinations, depends upon the ideal you hold in mind. Once you can picture a worthy ideal-object or idea-you can create it by adding here, eliminating there, smoothing, building, rearranging. By ideal we mean a mental image of something of superior worth, good ness and value, serving as a standard of excellence, utility beauty, efficiency, or whatever the case may be. The imagination, being the creative force, manifests from within out ward, from the ideal conception in the mind to its objective manifestation.

If we make our combinations along a pattern of inferior or mediocre significance by the use of inferior or mediocre mental images, the result will be in accordance. That is why those who imagine situations of calamity create the very thing they fear. That is why the first step in creating anything we wish is to create the image in the mind, and nourish it by constantly keeping it sharp and clear in one's thoughts.

Improvement in idea development is acquired by deliberately making some improvement every day on every thing we see or do. Things are improved when something useless is made useful; when an unattractive thing is made lovely; when discordant conditions are harmonized; when we produce a better way for doing anything; when we establish better relationships among people. Life is not intended to be an empty dream, nor to be spent in struggling for a hollow survival. Everyone can strive to make it more meaningful, more satisfying. In the process of improving anything we create something new, but we also enrich ourselves. Not only are we demonstrating and enlarging our creative abilities, but we also acquire more extensive first hand understanding of life's processes. And even a minor improvement which anyone contributes through his own life, raises the standard for life everywhere.

It has been said that the better is the enemy of the best. That is, we are so pleased when we have devised an improvement that we stop when this has been accomplished. But why not use the improvement itself as a base for still more progress?

It is not necessary to redesign a thing in its entirety. A detail improved can be very appealing. Even little betterments may lead to greater sales. It is easier, too, than trying to change a whole plan or product. A builder increases his sales through little differences in otherwise standardized homes. One will have an especially good garage, another an unusually attractive fireplace, a third may have two fine trees out front, a fourth may have flower boxes in the front windows, and so on.

I am sure most of us remember the inimitable story that Charles Lamb tells us of the origin of roast pig, which points up this thought. A careless boy accidentally set fire to the little hut in which some newborn pigs were quartered. The lad, at first, was much disturbed, not at the destruction of the house-that was a mere matter of some new straw and a couple hours' work to replace. But the pigs I How his father would beat him for that! He felt one to see if it might still be alive. He burned his finger and put it into his mouth. A wonderful flavor assailed his nostrils. What a rare taste was this. Soon he was so busy eating the roast pigs that he did not even notice his father's beatings. In the same way, the father, lamenting over the pigs, touched one, burned himself, and put his finger to his mouth. The same result. Soon the neighbors noticed that one conflagration after another was taking place on this man's estate. They watched him, discovered his secret, had him arraigned in court, and the court sampling some of the pig, reported Not Guilty. As a result, people began building frailer and frailer huts, and burning them down oftener and oftener, until some ingenious person discovered that it was not necessary to burn down the house to roast the pig.

Improvements can take an infinite number of forms. There never was and never can be an end to them. The idea of improvement makes a wonderful point of departure for the idea searcher, for it carries inherent in it a value beyond that of being merely different. It is being different with a purpose. And the purpose is one which the prospect will view sympathetically. Half of your selling is done if you are trying to sell an idea that embodies an improvement.

One of the best ways of locating a potential improvement is to think of the annoying and disagreeable processes, duties and conditions that people face. Sometimes the world seems full of them. Merely to grumble is adding just another to the collection. To improve or remove them is the one justification for thinking about them.

Can you think of something people need yet hate to touch? An outstanding success in the fish business was built by Gorton of Gloucester, Mass., on this principle, when he imagined how women would welcome codfish from which the bones had been removed. He also found he could distribute his product inland all over the country by means of his convenient packages.

Are you interested in an object whose use may cause injury or strain? Carrying a heavy ironing board from a closet to a work table was one of these, until a thoughtful architect devised an ironing board of a built-in variety, which could be lowered from the wall into working position.

Many improvements have been thought of to eliminate damage to property or clothes. Sunfast curtains, or cellophane bags may be cited.

Did you ever have the awkward experience of carving a roast and having it skid off the tray? A large specialty shop sells a tray that has spikes in it to secure the roast.

Do you know of disagreeable jobs that are neglected because they are so inconvenient to do? Your pet peeve may be a blessing in disguise. Think of the years that women had to mop laboriously under and behind the bathtub until someone thought of a flat tub on the floor that would fit tight against walls and corners.

Is there something that causes you to bend over, carry something heavy, put yourself in an awkward position? It is a proper subject for an improvement. When I drop a paper on the floor, I never bother stooping down to pick it up. I use the long desk scissors which extends the length of my arm about ten inches, and grasp the paper without bending. Many portable objects such as radios, typewriters and the like, are sold with cases to relieve the load and awkwardness of carrying.

What kind of a situation always makes you want to "cuss"? Let us say you hate subway crowds when you ride in a big city. The signs all say that no one is permitted to ride on the platforms, yet they are jammed to the gills. But by designing a subway car without end platforms, no one could ride on them.

How about jobs that get people dirty, wet, cold? They are susceptible of an improvement idea. That is the basis of the success of paper towels which are largely displacing the oldtime dish-rag and the newer dish mop, to say nothing of regular dish towels and hand towels in the kitchen. Their disposable quality enables one to wash the greasy dishes without soiling either the hands or a dish towel, thus saving time, energy and laundry. One may wipe the stove or anything else without a qualm. One may use them for countless cleaning purposes about the kitchen and bathroom, doing away with soiled, damp towels, and having always a fresh sanitary one that costs next to nothing and protects health, time and temper.

The boredom that children feel when they have to get a haircut led one barber to build a children's seat on a merry-go-round type of horse. Consider improvements in the use of waste and byproducts. Experiment, even with the useless. Bricks that were overburned or underdone used to be thrown away, until one day somebody built them experimentally into a wall. The varicolored effect turned out to be more pleasing than the perfect uniformity of properly made bricks had been. The earlier discards were henceforth renamed tapestry bricks, and became standard, at greater profit to all concerned.

Is there a safety hazard you know about that you car improve? Color is used as a safety device in many places For example, instead of making black leather shoes on black machinery so that the operator doesn't know where the leather leaves off and the machinery begins, the machinery is painted a bright contrasting color, and accidents are reduced. Another way to reduce accidents is to add light. A fluorescent pattern was designed for a rug in movie theatres' aisles to keep people from stumbling in the dark, and for those awkward moments when you wish you had another hand, there's "Ristlight"-a small flashlight attached to a band much like a wrist watch, so you don't have to waste a hand working the flashlight.

Embarrassing situations also often call for an idea to improve them. A screen and a bathrobe are two good answers. Another is noiseless plumbing. Another is Air-Wick.

Again, what is more annoying than a row of buttons to make clumsy mistakes with. The zipper was an answer to that problem. The first time I saw this contraption it was on a pair of galoshes, and for a long while this was the only place I saw it. So much so that when I used the word zippers I meant galoshes. Now of course, the handy device has been applied to almost any kind of closing on apparel.

Activities that cause too strenuous work call for an improvement, such as a washing machine. Jobs that cause eyestrain require an improvement somewhere along the line-perhaps bifocal glasses, or sun glasses, or magnifying glasses, or glareless paper, or rough, non-reflecting typewriter surfaces.

A popular incentive for producing ideas nowadays is the company suggestion box. Some 10,000 American companies maintain suggestion systems for the consideration of ideas submitted by employees. There is even a National Association of Suggestion Systems with headquarters in Chicago. General Motors is securing about 30,000 usable ideas from its employees each year. And just about one out of every four ideas submitted is usable. To date it has paid out over $9,000,000 for suggestions from employees.

The Suggestion Box has become an established factor in employee-management relations because of its two-way pay-off: it supplies companies with more than a million ideas a year, and workers with bonuses totalling some $16,000,000 or more, annually. Employers and government administrators are happy about the whole thing. They estimate that for every dollar paid out for employee suggestions, about ten dollars comes back to management or government in the forms of savings. Suggesters, whose ideas; click are usually paid 10 to 15 per cent of the saving that results.

Some ideas are extremely simple and obvious and ye can have results in remuneration out of all proportion to their simplicity. Remington Rand richly rewarded a woman who found that a useless hole was being drilled in a particular type of office machine-an operation carried over: from a previous model. One employee at General Motor became annoyed while typing up process sheets because they were so arranged that she could not use the tabulator: stops on her typewriter. So she sat down at home that nigh and revised the entire form. The idea was worth $750 to her. No one can say that ordinary men and women cannot think up new things.

Suggestions are desirable for any idea to make you work easier or to make the Company's service better. Here are a few typical ones:

1. Improve methods of doing work
2. Eliminate needless processes
3. Remove overlapping clerical work, duplicate records
4. Eliminate unused forms or used parts of forms
5. Decrease production costs
6. Diminish waste
7. Utilize or develop by-products
8. Improve working conditions
9. Minimize fatigue
10. Prevent accidents
11. Change locations of items to combine work into on operation
12. Reroute product to avoid bottlenecks
13. Improve service to customers
14. Improve service to other departments
15. Use equipment more efficiently
16. Improve storage, "housekeeping"
17. Improve handling
18. Improve packaging, delivery, etc.
19. Make working conditions more agreeable
20. Help the Company meet competition and grow

Lists of this kind could continue indefinitely, but you get the point.

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