I had an idea

[fbhjr]

"There is an idea forming in my head..." is a line from the character Og in the movie Time Bandits. It’s only his second idea ever and it seems to confuse him. (Well, it was implanted by Evil... And, if the other one was the Pink Bungado, I guess he should be confused.)
I know how he feels.
I rarely have them myself.
But, today at work I had an idea.

To be clear, I’m not talking regular ideas. I’m talking about “no one has ever done it that way before” ideas.
Of course, I’m not sure no one has done this one as I’m new to the industry. Maybe everyone buy my company does it. But, either way, it was new to me.

I’ve had a few of them over the years. They generally work out, but never seem to make much of an impression on the folks I work for.
Last place I worked I came up with an idea for a new tooth shape for our things that hang off of our walls. That was pretty much everything we made other then the walls themselves. I thought they were really great. One of the folks who installed our furniture came up to me, shook my hand, and thanked me for making his life much easier. No one in management cared. I was always a bit confused by that.

When I worked at the telecom company, I came up with a new way to stiffen PC boards. It was implemented across our product line. I was told by management “we’re looking for new things to patent. This is just the sort of thing that would be great, except it is mechanical and we don’t want to patent mechanical things.” Again, I was confused.

As I said, I don’t know if this one is new and different to anyone but me. But, hopefully it will be and will actually work out.

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

I hope it works out for you.

I can only imagine the lack-luster response from management is typical human competition/envy/ego taking place, secretly the management is jealous and/or afraid that your idea will put you in better light than they are.

my dad came up with a special molding technique for rubber shoe soles years ago - the company was so impressed they helped him get it patented (he even has a plaque somewhere in the house), but of course the company wrote the paperwork in such a way they essentially bought/pulled it out from under him and called it their own. He knows what he accomplished and he's proud of it, something they cannot fully take away. No matter, he's long gone from that company anyway.

but, I hope this idea works out well. Getting thanked from the customer/installer with your tooth mechanism I think is a really great compliment, and trumps the wet-match reaction of your managers.

Had you discovered such an improvement at my place, the manager would have found a way to re-word it so it sounded like his idea, while making you dissect every millimeter of your idea to re-form it to make it 'even better' because your original idea is just not good enough, even if it was 100% supportive to the problem/goal. Because 100.005% would look so much better on paper to his boss.

[saeble.livejournal.com]

good ideas have to be rammed down throats

please feel free to share with me for evaluation