They make it look so easy, those dang one percenters that the occupiers are so obsessed with. It's tempting to suggest that the occupiers are really just resentful of the people who have the talent to see possibilities the occupiers can't see.
Jim Powell at Forbes explains it in The Genius of "One Percenters" Is Their Amazing Command of the Obvious. He summarizes a few successes and notes how the people who created popular products and successful businesses were observant enough to discover and then fill a need. Examples include:
Fred Smith who saw the need for overnight delivery and created Fed-Ex.
George de Mestral who took a close look at the burrs that stuck in his pants and invented Velcro.
Ray Kroc who saw the demand for fast food and created McDonalds.
George Crum, whose customers wanted fried potatoes that wouldn't go saggy, invented the potato chip.
Peter Dunn and Albert Wood were looking for drugs that might reduce blood pressure, and they came up with -- boing! -- Viagra.
Many of the examples Mr. Powell cites required a basic knowledge in some field to get to the point where they knew enough to conduct experiments in that field. And in some cases they came up with a product then had to figure out what it was good for. But they thought they could do it, and they did it. Anyone who thinks they can't do it probably can't.
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