Session Information:

3DThinking™. Going ‘inside the box’ to Manage Innovation and Transformation Shifts

3D Thinking™ nurtures the concept of going ‘inside the box’ to tackle your challenges.

3D Thinking™ generates dimensional thinking for product and services development to produce something that has value, did not exist before, or used in a new way.

3D Thinking™ will facilitate a ‘shift’ in how you think, not what you think.

3D Thinking™ uses real world examples such as: "what were you thinking when you purchased an entire railroad box car filled with spaghetti sauce?"

The problem is ‘inside the box; not outside of it. Learn new ideas that willhelp create a better value proposition and set a higher price by synthesizing new insights and wisdom.

It will address

• What do we know?
• What do they need or want?
• What will they pay for your solutions?

Your audience isn’t a monolith, so your products, services, and solutions shouldn’t be either. And with product and brand proliferation the consumer is begging for really innovative solutions to their perceived needs and problems. If you aren’t RE-INNOVATING, chances are you’ve dropped into the “price barrel” along with all the other “me too” products and services.

Conversations with plain talk for smart people will be punctuated with licensed movie and television scenes, ‘out of the box’ problems i.e.

What do you, as a college student, when you acquire a box car loaded with Chef Boyardee spaghetti sauce?

• How do you put a sign on a building when the city prohibits it?
• How do you offer the most requested incentive requested by used car salesmen, a Rolex Submariner, when Toyota doesn’t have the budget to provide them?
• And the answer to what I did, as a law student, when I aquired a box car loaded with Chef Boyardee spaghetti sauce?

These and other real-world case studies will challenge creative problem- solving skills and reveal ‘inside the box’ solutions that become evident when 3D Thinking inspires greater awareness of overlooked connections between actions and consequences.

Key Takeaways:

Attendees will leave with an enhanced skill that will help find effective solutions to their most complicated business problems.

Attendees will be shown the 3D Thinking techniques to…

• Detect new opportunities using existing resources.
• Discover your components.
• Determine applications to product, process, marketing, and management innovative problem solving.
• Develop, test and market.
• Distinguish opportunities from distractions.
• Deliver more persuasive presentations

Session Transcript:

Hello my name is James Feldman and I'll be your host for the presentation on. 3d thinking, let's get started what started with coved changed the world and we can continue to leverage that change to our advantage using what I refer to as 3d thinking.

It really doesn't matter who you are what your station in life is where you are in the corporate ladder whether you're active whether you're retired we all have to ensure that shift happens and in doing so we have to recognize that we're going to have resistance because everybody resists change in some form or fashion some more violently some more passively but in any case most of us don't like change but what starts here today, at BTOES can literally change the world.

You have heard from a lot of experts and I want to echo what they are saying in the fact that we can discover new opportunities and leverage those changes to our advantage so today i would like to enhance your 3d thinking i would like to boost your solutions i would like to really say to you how to discover new resources how to stimulate leadership skills and how to shift your thinking now these are a few of the clients that I've worked with.

This is not to brag but establish a foundation of why you are going to be able to learn from somebody who is a broad generalist I'm an advisor not an expert i'm an advisor that has worked in almost every industry with almost every size corporation but i do want to make it clear i am not a c-suite level executive I'm an advisor to them and as a result i bring you a wealth of information across a lot of industries and silos that I've blended together to enhance your thinking.

Look the future is now and during COVID I wrote my 13th book, shift happens no job no money now what it's a toolbox and it is the basic foundation upon which this presentation is built and how to identify what can be done now to discover new opportunities on your journey to bright ideas on your recession revenue rescue so let's get started number one if you agree with a hundred percent of what i say to you today I have failed.

It's that simple i am here to do one thing help you refine and discover your next bright idea and in doing so i want to make sure that you focus on clearing your plate on getting rid of your biases and being open to new ways of how to think the pandemic was unthinkable if we were writing a movie script or a television story we could have never sold it because nobody would have believed it but that being said ask yourself two questions number one are you delivering an innovative solution that your customers are passionate about and number two will there be a large enough number of decision makers and buyers to grow your business.

Once the coronavirus is over now we have all grown up being told think outside the box i want you to write down stop thinking outside the box and i want you to start thinking inside the box and here's why if we are outside the box we do not know what the problem is we do not know what the components are we do not know what makes up the problem itself.

So you have to go inside the box to not only identify the problem not only identify the components but to get a 360 degree view of the marketplace to see if you're working on the right problem and a solution that has a way to be monetized and i refer to that as 3d thinking.

Now as we approach the problem I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions have we looked at all the complexities of the problem itself did we look at it from different and multiple perspectives did we get to the root of the problem remember we are inside the box not outside the box and as a result we have a better view of not only the problem but the marketplace did we exhaust all possibilities did we over simplify things either in our definition of the problem or our solutions and is the solution we've come up with the best solution and did i think inside the box.

When i did this i think we all recognize especially after the coronavirus started the status quo no longer works and that the culture eats strategy for breakfast so what are we going to do about it well what we're going to do about it is really not as difficult as you might think what we're going to do is change how we think rather than what you think we are going to look at how our value is measured because it's measured by the size of the problems we solve now let me point out to you that no matter how you use 3d thinking whether it's sales or tech or operations or erp 3d thinking is applicable to everything you do now i may have introduced a new concept to you forgive me if i have and that's erp and that's enterprise resource planning.

What that does is it brings together a way for hr to collaborate with sales and customer service and if you're not using an erp software write down that this should be one of those things that you should investigate as we move forward and get past the pandemic but i'm not here to talk about erp i'm just bringing that to your attention what i want to suggest that no matter what our solution is it must be scalable this was an ad that was put out by general electric and they talked about the impact of innovation now in doing so you're going to see a lot of numbers you're going to see a lot of things that that you may want to record let me make your life easy for you.

I'm going to give you a link to this presentation so that everything will be available to you afterwards but what drives innovation and what is the impact of innovation within your organization do you see some of those key touch points in the chart that general electric created and are you ready to change how you think not what you think and 3d thinking is applicable to every part of an organization whether it's the the success or failure or the hr or the i.t or staffing or operations or distribution or innovation all of them require a methodology that allows you to open up your head get away from the biases you know.

We did it this way before and it didn't work and try something new i know all of us that have sitting here have had some idea blow up in our hands when it happened did you ask yourself a couple of questions did it address a long-term problem with a long-term solution did you identify the short-term and the long-term markets because after all you're not wine you're not going to age it for several years before you bring it to the market you want to be able to recover your investment as quickly as possible did you proactively shift if you needed to or were you rigid in your thinking and did you create a road map model of how this worked and i refer to that as the journey to bright ideas now along the way.

I want you to remember this you've got to learn the rules and then break them so don't forget rule number six here is something that is an analog device that i believe will change how you go to market notice the four quadrants take a post-it note put the name of a company a client or an employee and put them in one of these four quadrants now again here's the link in the corner jfa.tips vtoes on how you're going to get this whole presentation and be able to download this for your own use as you start to build the four quadrants.

You're going to see in the upper right that's your ideal client and in the lower left that's your worst client so if you want to explode your ideas explode your business the first group that you work on is what the upper right those are people who want the solution who understand the problem and can contact and pursue them on your behalf as you move up the ladder to get to the decision maker that is the person that can write you the check that's right if nobody could write you a check or you haven't found who that is this is nothing more than a hobby and none of us need a new hobby right now let me tell you a little bit about myself when i was six years old i went to my mother and i said i would like an allowance and she said go talk to your father.

So I went to my father and I said I'd like an allowance he said go talk to your mother my first business lesson get all the decision makers in the room at the same time so i brought them together and i asked them both the same question i'd like an allowance and they uniformly said no but they also being parents gave me suggestions you can mow the yard you can walk the dog you can wash the car you can set up a lemonade stand i like the idea of the lemonade stand so i went outside and what i discovered is that the entire block was filled with lemonade stands it wasn't a new and unique idea in fact there was so much competition there was no reason to have another lemonade stand and then i saw people that had elevated the experience they had literally set up backyards sold cookies candies as well as lemonade.

My second business lesson be the best at what you do or sell to those that are and at that early age that's what i decided i would get into sales i would come up with solutions and sell them to organizations like yourself that hadn't been able to either craft them discover them or execute them on their own here's how it worked i went back home i sat down and i figured out what were the components that made the production of a tub of lemonade a pitcher of lemonade they had the lemonade mix they had the sugar they had the cups and i reasoned that if i could take that and put it into a ziploc bag as a kit.

I could go door-to-door at night and sell the mothers my lemonade kit they wouldn't have to go to the grocery store they wouldn't have to make a separate trip and because i was local maybe they would feel sorry for me and buy it because i was i was young and i was energetic and i was entrepreneurial well guess what i was right at the end of the summer i had created these kits again lemonade sugar in a ziploc with the same number of cups and at the end of the summer my net profit in my savings account 351 dollars now i tell you that story because it sets the tone for everything that i've done.

Since I started to apply these and started saying how do i how do i leverage these thought process and i really didn't get there because i didn't know about 3d thinking i hadn't created it yet i didn't know the importance of it and i didn't know how to implement it but it was always in the back of my mind how do i do things like the lemonade stand but the thing that i did learn early on is the what i refer to as the what's in it for me you must always address the what's in it for me for your customer not you not me them if you can provide them a solution if you can provide them a service if you can do something that enhances their belief in what you're doing.

You can make money now here we go while i was in law school one of my uh fellow students called me and said jim i can't make it i've got to adjust a railroad car i go what's that mean he says i'm going to adjust a rail car i don't know what that means but i want to go with you we found the railroad car we opened it up and inside was pasta sauce and i said what if i looked inside the railroad car and really thought about it well inside the car was pasta sauce and the pasta sauce leads me to the term box car i had gone into the box car which i've shortened to the box and in it were number 10 cans of chef boyardee spaghetti sauce a lot of chef boyardee spaghetti sauce.

I didn't know how much but as i later figured out it was a 60-foot car and these are the dimensions and the cubic foot and the tonnage and i reasoned it out that that could hold x number of gallons did i count them no this was my best guess and my best guess said that i had about 33 000 gallons so while i was standing there i said to my friend what are you going to do now he says well i got to find somebody to buy the buy the contents and i said well what would you take for it he said well five thousand dollars i said five thousand dollars you got a deal.

So on that Thursday i i committed to five thousand i went to the bank long story got the bank to give me the money paid him as five thousand dollars that's great that's great friday the phone rings this is Mr. Feldman I'm from the atchison topeka santa fe railroad did you buy railroad car mdw in 1969 i go yes he said move it what do you mean move it he goes well you didn't expect to leave it sitting here i had no idea what to do well I'm in panic but i knew i had a focus group coming the next day.

So I went to the focus group with some pizza and some beer and i said guys you know ladies i want you to help me with the problem I'm working on um whatever what if what if what if i had a lot of a lot of spaghetti sauce well well how much well let's approach the problem with what do we know what are we going to do about it and how we're going to sell it and here is where i crafted the concept of 3d thinking depth determination and distance so in going inside the box the depth is very simple investigate what's inside the box identify the components and start to come up with some ideas of how you're going to move it around when you're inside the box you want to look outside and see.

If there's a way to sell it who are you going to market it to and as you market it are you going to become innovative you're going to be creative how are you going to monetize this solution and then how are you going to initiate everything that you've done and are you determined enough to carry it through there it is 3d thinking depth distance and determination and then i remembered the way to kill an idea is often heard as yes but so there can be no yes buts when you're doing 3d thinking you want to ask better questions the questions are out there all the time what if what's next what's possible and why not now let's go back and start to think about.

What are we going to do about our problem I got a lot of number 10 cans of spaghetti sauce is there a need if there's a need let's fill the need so the group decided that we would start with where was it going and we figured out military university hospitals prisons distributors and others makes sense right so that Monday i got on the phone and I started calling and the first place i called was a military base and the military base goes great.

I'll give you two dollars a gallon well two dollars a gallon is sixty six thousand dollars I'm great I'm a genius let's do it he goes fine i only need one thing before I can do this I need your gsa number what's that this is the number that you get from the government to be able to sell the government any product i don't have one well we'll mail you the forms you mail them to Washington washington we'll mail them back to you and in a couple weeks you'll have it remember i've only got a couple of days the guy who told me to move.

It has given me till Wednesday this is already Monday I don't have time for this well uh where was it going let's call universities let's call hospitals let's call prisons yeah they were all interested except for one thing they all wanted a gsa number now i'm starting to have panic so now i start to rethink the question what about distributors they didn't call me back now more panic let's think about this if it's not going to where's it coming from the manufacturer.

So i chase down the manufacturer and i find out through a lot of conversations and a lot of homework over the phone that cost them about three dollars to make a gallon i get a hold of the product manager and the product manager says well i don't want to pay that i want to pay you half and i said listen i'm only guessing there's 33 000 gallons in there give me a break give me an extra 10 cents or 20 cents because you and i know when you really get into it it's probably going to be more than 33 000 gallons but i'm willing to live with it if you're willing to give me say another 10 cents and he agreed so i got 52 800 not a bad deal right after i pay the bank I'm going to make 47.8 not a bad deal for three days worth of work would you say.

I turned him down that's right i turned him down now I know what you're thinking i know what you're thinking why would Jim turn this down he had no other choices what is he thinking well i know what you're thinking you're thinking i must be crazy well I'm really not that crazy I'm just that greedy that's right if he's got 52 8 and i'm going to net 47 8 but the military offered me 66 and I had to pay the back the bank back five how can i reach my 66 now think about it for just a second how are you going to do that look at the problem go inside the box car and think about the problem and then you step out and you realize the boxcar has value so today a new boxcar is about 135 thousand dollars in 1969 i think it was about seventy five thousand so he agreed to thirty thousand for the boxcar now my profit has risen to seventy seven thousand eight hundred dollars.

How many of you thought about the boxcar and its value remember you've got to get the depth and the distance before you do the determination so at the end of the day i paid the bank five i gave the adjuster five and i gave the manager five why would i do that because i wanted to be the only person they called if they had to adjust another railroad car and as it worked out in that year i got 12 more opportunities and i made a lot of money while going to law school and adjusting railroad cars in that case i cleared fifty nine thousand five hundred dollars while being a student engaging 3d thinking so i learned from this another business rule don't let what you think you know prevent you from learning what you need to know and then i always refer back to rule number six because in the past you may have weathered the storm but today is different.

It's about the ability to imagine what has never existed before and turn success comes from turning problems into opportunities and rule number six was always in the back of my mind do your innovative solutions stand out how do you sell more ketchup you turn it upside down how many years did hines find people that were pounding on their cans and catching the bottles of ketchup and didn't realize that they weren't listening to them once they did that they added flavors they went organic and they made it portable they added millions and millions of dollars by listening to their customers by engaging in what the community wanted and delivering new products same with starkist starkist was in a can for 110 years they took the can and they looked at the can and they said what if we took the can and put it into a pouch and brought in 200 million dollars of new revenue simply by repackaging.

I got hired by Toyota to do a promotion for used car salesmen in polling the car salesman i found out that their number one choice was a Rolex the retail price of a Rolex submariner at the time was about 8500 Toyota didn't have the budget they were ready to cancel the promotion when i came back and said if i can get you twice as many Rolexes as you originally thought would you consider the promotion can I sell them to you with 50 off and we move forward they go absolutely i bought used Rolexes used Rolexes for a used Rolex car salesman when you put on a watch it's used the car salesman didn't care in fact they loved it so much that Toyota's projection of how many they were going to go through was quadrupled but their sales went up so much that they were willing to fund it ask better questions if you don't ask the right questions then the answers don't matter use Rolex's use car salesman could you do it for new car salesmen probably not and as you move forward you start to say what am i going to do differently than what I did yesterday.

Now I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions and they're just going to be all over the place and you're all going to get your head spinning but once again copy down the BTOES link jfa tips and it'll come to you do you aspire do you choose do you discover do you evolve you accelerate do you scale do you extend do you mobilize that's right lots of questions do you have the answers and at the end of the day there's three more steps you've got to follow how are we different what do our customers need and why should our customers buy from us it's that simple are you different do you know what your customers need and you understand the wii fm and are you under charging and under earning have you confused impossible with inconvenient and if so do you realize that tomorrow can change.

If we actually so ladies and gentlemen if nothing changes nothing changes if you are not a risk taker then you are a caretaker embrace and drive change engage 3d thinking be adventurous and be open-minded pursue growth and learning build an open honest relationship build a positive team and family spirit do more with less be passionate and determine to change and ensure that shifts happen we have an opportunity to discover new opportunities on your journey to bright ideas i am the newest and I hope that I've been able to guide you down that path and remember rule number six that's right don't take yourself too seriously.

Thanks for your time and if you're interested in my book here's how you get a copy of it if you're not interested in the book but you just want the information I provided I'll remind you with the link today.

So create your own bucket list you provide solutions you create value you engage your customers you reward loyalty you teach them while you reach them and you reach them through their heart you do not major in minor things you become more passionate you are aware of distractions disguised as opportunities you are aware of distractions disguised as opportunities thank you thank you for your time here's my contact information here's how you download this presentation and remember it's all about how you think not what you think and the fact that BTOES has brought you some of the brightest minds in the world to help you learn how to think better it has been my honor and my pleasure to share a few moments with you let's ensure that shift happens.

Thank you.