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How to Pitch Ideas
4:55 PM Monday September 8, 2008
Back when I was teaching at the University of Washington, one surprise for the students of my creative thinking course (PDF outline) was the importance of pitching ideas in the history if innovation. We like to think great innovations happen because of how wonderful the idea is - that somehow it sells itself to investors, VPs and customers. But the true story of every great innovation involves many failed pitches, in ratios of dozens or more to one.
One key text for the course was Ira Flatow's excellent book They All Laughed: Fascinating Stories Behind Great Inventions. Flatow digs into the true history of how world changing inventions like copy machines, lasers, light bulbs and Velcro came to be, including the various ways their inventors tried, and mostly failed, to pitch their ideas.
Nearly a third of my own course involved pitchwork, breaking down how to express ideas you've developed in ways most likely to generate interest. This included the discussion of this favorite essay of mine: How to pitch an idea.
What is the best pitch you've ever seen in person? What made it so good? How about the worst pitch?
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Scott Berkun
Scott Berkun is the best-selling author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired Magazine and on National Public Radio. He is a recurring expert on the 2008 CNBC TV Series, The Business of Innovation.
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Comments
I like what you're doing with this. You see the importance of pitching emphasized all over the place as it applies to entrepreneurs starting businesses, but I haven't seen it discussed much in terms of other creative works. Obviously there's the advice "be so good they can't ignore you", but being able to explain the value of what you're creating is often vital.
- Posted by blake borgeson
September 9, 2008 5:01 PM
Some of the pitches made by the Web 2.0 entrepreneurs on TechCrunch have been pretty bad, although pitching anything that depends on an advertising-based model with zero historic conversion data and traffic data sounds bad if the presenter does not give a compelling reason for why his or her service is uniquely qualified to acquire said levels of lucrative advertising prospects.
- Posted by Working Smarter
September 9, 2008 6:51 PM
How would you pitch an idea for a new magazine? I already have a sample made.
- Posted by Megan
March 16, 2009 5:08 PM