Tag Archives: idea stoppers

109 more excuses for not innovating

in Innovation

negative thinking

“The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget about old ideas.”

Gone in Sixty Seconds film

~John Maynard Keynes, Economist

Everyone loves lists! After reading the I thought I’d look for some more excuses (there’s always more excuses!) and guess what?

I found a list of idea stoppers dating back to 1956 of a General Electric document found in the Bureau of Ships’ code 109 on Value Engineering. Here’s the link to the pdf.

What’s incredible is this list is over 50 years old and yet we still hear or say many of these idea stoppers on a daily basis. Imagine what we could achieve if we could eliminate the negative thinking that permeates all areas of our life.

Here then are 109 idea stoppers for negative thinkers:

  1. I agree but
  2. We have tried that too but
  3. We did it this way
  4. Procedure won’t permit
  5. It won’t work
  6. It’s not in the budget
  7. Where does the money come from?
  8. You can’t do that
  9. You should know better
  10. Who thought of that?
  11. I think it stinks
  12. Costs too much
  13. I can’t give you the money to go ahead without further cogitation
  14. Too big or too small for us
  15. We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work
  16. We’re not ready for that
  17. We don’t do things that way
  18. We have the best system already
  19. Everybody does it this way
  20. NO
  21. NO, NO
  22. NO, NO, NO
  23. It’s policy
  24. Too academic in it’s approach
  25. Not timely
  26. It’s a gimmick
  27. Not for us
  28. Too hard to administer
  29. Not profitable
  30. NO good
  31. Plain stupid
  32. Nuts
  33. Screwy
  34. Impractical
  35. Idea too radical
  36. Too complicated
  37. It isn’t progressive
  38. Too theoretical
  39. Too difficult
  40. That is unsound
  41. Not feasible
  42. Impossible
  43. The production department won’t accept it
  44. The field will think we’re ling haired
  45. Personnel aren’t ready for this
  46. Engineering can’t do it
  47. The “X” won’t approve it
  48. The “X” is different
  49. The men won’t go for it
  50. The “X” won’t stand for it
  51. The new men won’t understand
  52. The old men won’t use it
  53. You’ll never be able to sell that to management
  54. Boss won’t like it
  55. Can’t see it
  56. Too much trouble to get started
  57. Doesn’t conform to our policy
  58. We don’t have the manpower
  59. Who is doing it?
  60. Takes too much time
  61. Too much work
  62. It’s never been done before, let’s not risk our neck
  63. It won’t apply to our problem
  64. Don’t move too fast
  65. It’s new
  66. It will not set a precedent
  67. We don’t want to do this now
  68. The “X” can’t build it
  69. It’s too much trouble
  70. We have too many projects now
  71. Not enough background
  72. Why can’t we do it another way
  73. Not convincing
  74. Stretches the imagination too much Batman Forever movie download
  75. Against good judgment
  76. Why something new now
  77. We know all this
  78. Haven’t we got something just as good now?

    The Love Guru video

  79. Why should we change now?
  80. The thinking is purely on the surface, get some depth to it
  81. We don’t need it

    The Super on dvd

  82. Let’s wait and see later
  83. Don’t be ridiculous
  84. That’s not our responsibility
  85. We don’t have time for that
  86. It will make present equipment obsolete
  87. We don’t have enough volume
  88. It’s not practical for operating people
  89. It’s too hard to maintain
  90. We’ve never done it before
  91. Not permitted by specifications
  92. That will take two years to test
  93. Our competitor didn’t do it that way
  94. Not in accordance with standard plans
  95. Let’s shelve it for the time being
  96. Let’s form a committee
  97. It won’t work here
  98. It’s not standard
  99. Cost doesn’t matter
  100. What about the directive?
  101. It won’t stand shock
  102. We can’t be sure
  103. We don’t have the ceiling
  104. Why change it. It works!
  105. We haven’t tested it yet
  106. I don’t care how long it has been used
  107. How do we know it will work?
  108. I’m too busy to decide now
  109. We don’t have enough facts