Innovation is Everybody's Business: How to Make Yourself Indispensable in Today's Hypercompetitive World

Chapter 10. Build the Buy-In for New Ideas: Tools and Techniques for Selling Your Innovations to Co-Workers, the Boss, and the End Customer

I'm standing atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia enjoying the most spectacular scene imaginable. It's breezy up here and you can see for miles in all directions. Off to my right, the world-famous Sydney Opera House beckons ships entering Darling Harbour, as sailboats and ferries glide across the cerulean waters. Behind me stand the steel and glass skyscrapers of downtown Sydney. A hundred meters below, cars look like children's toys as they zip back and forth on the roadway, and a passenger train lumbers across.

Don't get the idea what I'm doing is risky. I'm with a small group of tourists from all over the world, and we're all strapped in at the waistband with safety cables that attach to a master line. To come up here, first you must empty your pockets into a locker, don a special nylon jumpsuit and hat, pass through a metal detector, take a Breathalyzer test, submit to being patted down, and attend a briefing. This is a thriving business, and 2 million people have been up here before me. Our guide, a wisecracking young fellow from Melbourne, tells us how this concession came to be.

An entrepreneur named Paul Cave, looking for something memorable to do for a World Congress of the Young Presidents Organization, got special permission to organize a group climb. Everybody had so much fun that Cave hatched an idea: He decided that more people ...