http://www.risingabovethenoise.com For business owners, entrepreneurs, startups and brands of all types, the need to innovate and maintain an edge requires VISION. This Slideshare is created by award-winning brand identity designer, rebranding specialist and Fast Company expert blogger David Brier whose presentations have exceeded 570,000 worldwide. Featured in Forbes, INC, Adweek, Fast Company, The New York Times and The Atlantic, David's work is synonymous with rebelling against the status quo to create memorable brands that defy gravity an rise above the noise. Subscribe to his blog at http://www.risingabovethenoise.com

1. The Best Business Slideshare of 2014
15 Ways to say
“Are you effin’ kidding me?”
in the most politically acceptable way possible
@davidbrier

2. or how to politely ask:
“Who died and
made you boss?”
The Best Business Slideshare of 2014

3. In business,
questions are necessary.

4. Let’s be honest:
Some are just plain stupid.

5. Let’s be honest:
Some are just plain stupid.

6. Like,
“What if it fails?”

7. To which the answer is,
“What if it doesn’t?”

8. But sometimes,
we each need a little more
ammo when shortsightedness
rears its ugly head

9. The next time somebody tries to shoot
down your next innovation,
here are 15 actual examples
of business shortsightedness
you can reference

10. 1.
“We don’t like their sound, and
guitar music is on the way out.”
—Decca Recording Company,
rejecting the Beatles, 1962

11. 2.
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
— Bill Gates, 1981

12. 3.
“I think there is a world market
for maybe five computers.”
—Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

13. 4.
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
— H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

14. 5.
“A cookie store is a bad idea.
Besides, the market research reports say
America likes crispy cookies,
not soft and chewy cookies like you make.”
—Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs.
Fields’ Cookies

15. 6.
“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t
have done the experiment. The literature
was full of examples that said
‘you can’t do this.’ ”
—Spencer Silver, on the work that led
to the unique adhesives for
3-M “Post-It” Notepads

16. 7.
“You want to have consistent and uniform
muscle development across all of your muscles?
It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life. You just have
to accept inconsistent muscle development as an
unalterable condition of weight training.”—
Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the
“unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus

17. 8.
“Everything that can be invented
has been invented.”
—Charles H. Duell, Commissioner,
U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
(In 1899, there were 25,527 patents total.
Today, there are over 250,000 that impact smartphones alone.)

18. 9.
“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this
amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and
what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to
you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come
work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to
Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you.
You haven’t got through college yet.’”
— Steve Jobs, on attempts to get Atari and HP
interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer

19. 10.
“The concept is interesting and
well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’
the idea must be feasible.”
—A Yale University management professor, in
response to FedEx founder Fred Smith’s paper
proposing reliable overnight delivery service

20. 11.
“The wireless music box has no
imaginable commercial value. Who would pay
for a message sent to nobody in particular?”
—David Sarnoff’s associates, in response to his
urging for investment in the radio during the 1920s

21. 12.
“There is no reason anyone would
want a computer in their home.”
—Ken Olson, President, Chairman and
Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

22. 13.
“This ‘telephone’ has too many
shortcomings to be seriously considered as
a means of communication. The device is
inherently of no value to us.”
—Western Union internal memo, 1876

23. 14.
“But what... is it good for?”
—Commenting on the microchip,
an engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968

24. 15.
“I have traveled the length and
breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you
that data processing is a fad that
won’t last out the year.”
—The editor in charge of business books for
Prentice Hall, 1957

25. The lesson?
Closed minds are
for the birds.

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Is your brand built for growth?
Will it rise above the noise? If not, let’s talk.

28. Need help choosing the
right target to elevate
your brand?
Visit and subscribe at RisingAboveTheNoise.com
Follow David Brier on twitter:
@davidbrier
Design, art direction and text by David Brier of DBD International Copyright 2014 DBD International. Excerpted from a Fast Company article.
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