Introduction
With money in your pocket, you are wise, you are handsome, and you sing well, too.
—Anonymous
When I wrote the first edition of this book, way back in the Dark Ages, I had to decide how to organize the information to make it as meaningful and helpful to readers as possible. I figured that by telling what I know, I’d not be creating an army of competitors; I’d be creating some new colleagues. Creating ideas for profit is a lonely business, and those of us who do it for a living are a small hardy band. The demand for fresh, innovative new product ideas, or popular new TV show ideas, or brilliant new software programs is so huge and never ending, and those of us devoted to supplying them are so few, that I can use all the help I can get!
This is an odd business to be in but one that I find exhilarating, creative, and totally satisfying. There are no seasons, no good times, and no bad times—everything depends on the quality of the idea and into whose hands it’s placed. In good times companies are flush with money to spend on interesting and innovative new products, and in bad times companies need these fresh and innovative product ideas to help get them back into the black. What other business is like that? And even better—there’s no competition. You can license your brilliant idea to company A, but so can I (or to company B, C, or D). No company ever said they had too many wonderful products and weren’t open to hearing about another one. And the beauty of this is that ...
