Why does this post memorialize the passing of a novelist, Kurt Vonnegut?

I began my career (before P&G) in one of General Electric’s famed training programs. In Schenectady I was assigned to a desk that once belonged to Kurt Vonnegut before he became a novelist. I was 23 years old and had heard of Slaughterhouse Five, but knew nothing else of Vonnegut. Tracing my fingers over his intitials carved in the middle drawer of my desk, I decided to find out. I’ve since read every word he has written at least once, many of them more times than that.

Vonnegut the novelist taught me the creative value of looking at every issue from as many sides as possible. He did it in Literature. We do it in marketing. I don’t mean the wisdom in looking at issues from many different sides but the marketing and creative value inherent in different facets of every problem and opportunity.

Once when we realized that new package copy on millions of tubes of Neutrogena Hand Cream contained a typo, Vonnegut’s thinking led me to keep the packages and sponsor a consumer contest to find the typo. I daresay more people read the package copy than usual. And we saved several hundred thousand dollars by using the tubes. The brand grew also.

Looking at a marketing issue from the other side led to the creation of the Captive Audience Marketing technique that propelled Microsoft Word to market leadership over Word Perfect in record time.

When you look at a horse from above, it looks like a violin. The lesson from Vonnegut is to train yourself to look at issues from as many perspectives as possible. Therein lies one of the rules of innovation and creativity. See what others miss.

I am both glad and sad that I have read everything that Vonnegut ever wrote. I wish there were more.

P.S. The New York Times has a very good obituary fo Vonnegut beginning on page one, April 12th, 2007