Theory of Incremental Advantage

When You Have a Good Idea Don't Let Rejection Stop Your Momentum

When Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law approached William Orton, president of the Western Electric Company, in 1876, to sell him the patent on the telephone for $100,000, the offer was rejected. Orton is reported to have declined the offer with the observation, "What use could this company make of an electrical toy?" Two years later, Orton ruefully observed to associates that he would gladly pay $25 million for the patent, were he offered it again.

Television personality Matt Lauer's career hit a rut. He was looking to depart the television business. He responded to an ad for a tree-cutting job. At the same time his interviewing skills and telegeneity were picked up by senior executives at GE. These executives thought he would be an ideal candidate to co-anchor the NBC's The Today Show. When the GE executives called to make his this offer, he thought it was a call about the tree-cutting position.

Everyone Suffers Defeat, The Key is Rebounding

One of the most common traits of highly successful people is their ability to rebound from defeat. They later look back on their defeats and comment that those defeats where actually blessings in disguise. They say that disasters that befell them were actually fortunate events. They might say something like, "Yes, I did suffer a heart attack. But thank goodness it happened when I was jogging passed the hospital," or "Yes, my house burned down. But thank goodness no one was home and all of our important paperwork remained unscathed in our fire resistant metal cabinets."

For example, when Warren Buffett was twenty years old, he was rejected from Harvard Business School. He immediately went to a library and began looking into the possibility of applying to other business schools. It was only then that he noticed that two business professors whose work he admired both taught at Columbia. Buffett applied to Columbia at the last minute and was accepted. One of the professors, Benjamin Graham, later became Buffett's mentor and helped initiate his highly successful career in business. As Buffett later remarked, "Probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me was getting rejected from Harvard."