What ‘It’ll Never Work’ Is Really Telling Your Small Business

By Chic Thompson, founder of WAGiLabs

(small.news) — In 1976, I was a young employee at Walt Disney Productions. During a brainstorming session in Burbank, I suggested releasing our cartoons on a new format: videotape.

The company’s president, Card Walker, looked at me and said:

“We will never release our cartoon films on videotape. There’s too great a danger of illegal copying.”

That same year, Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Productions sued Sony over the Betamax.

I took “never” seriously. I left Disney, started a one-person cartoon company built entirely on videotape, and sold it to Encyclopedia Britannica in 1984. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the company, and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business invited me to lecture on entrepreneurship. More than four decades later, I retired.

Here’s what four decades of brainstorming on six continents taught me: “It’ll never work” rarely means never. It usually means, “I can’t see it yet.” In business, that can signal a blind spot: fewer competitors, a lower barrier to entry, and an opportunity protected by a reflexive “Yes, but…”

We can’t see blind spots—we must hear them. They sound like this:

“Customers would never pay for that.”
“That could never work in our industry.”
“We’ve never done it that way.”
“The boss will never approve it.”

Each statement invites the same question: What assumption is hiding underneath it?

A complex problem can hold two competing truths at once. When the same “never” keeps surfacing—from customers, competitors, or your own team—don’t accept it as a verdict. Treat it as a clue and find the assumption underneath it.

From A to B

My neighbor and childhood mentor was Rube Goldberg, the cartoonist and engineer famous for drawing wildly complicated chain-reaction contraptions to perform simple tasks—like using a string, a parrot, and a skyrocket to wipe your chin with a napkin.

Most people try to move from point A to point B as quickly as possible. That convergent approach feels efficient and controlled.

Rube did the opposite: he traveled from A to B through all 26 letters of the alphabet, because creativity often hides in the detours. I call those detours “creative collisions”: moments when a problem, an observation, and an unexpected idea run into one another.

So, I have always looked at brainstorming as a zigzag process that provokes creative collisions, introduces constraints, and embraces detours.

Big Ideas

In 1970, as a new-product chemist at W. L. Gore & Associates, I saw that an early version of the material that became GORE-TEX—smooth, breathable, and easy to clean—might solve a hospital problem: bedsores caused by rough, heat-trapping mattress covers.

I designed a hospital bed sheet from the material and tested a prototype on my waterbed. Instead of changing the sheet, I could wipe it clean with alcohol—and sleeping on it felt like surfing.

Then the hospital pilot began, and patients started sliding out of bed—not ideal if you have a catheter or are in a body cast. The test ended within a week. I had forgotten to account for just how slick the material was, and for the side effects that slickness could create.

My boss, Bill Gore, asked a question I still use in every brainstorm I run: “We know what went wrong—but what went right with the sheet?”

What went right was the material’s breathability and cleanability. Those strengths redirected the idea toward surgical gowns, face masks, and bedding for burn-center patients who remained in one position with safety rails on the sides of the bed. Gore’s broader expanded-PTFE material later found uses in medical devices and consumer products such as Glide dental floss. The failed bed-sheet pilot was the start of a rewarding adventure into health care products.

In 1992, Pepsi brought me in to help develop a clear soft drink. I suggested skipping soda and testing bottled water instead, with a distinctive bottle and a name that felt slightly foreign and upscale. The immediate response was that Pepsi would never sell bottled water. After more brainstorming and development, Aquafina entered a test market in Wichita in 1994.

Neither idea began with an easy yes. Both began with a confident “never”—and an assumption worth testing. Don’t argue with a “never.” Run it through three questions:

What specifically makes this a “never”—cost, timing, capability, or belief?
Who might see the problem differently?
What quick test could reveal whether this “never” is a blind spot?

Yes, AND…

I’ve watched promising ideas die in eight seconds.

Someone shares a fresh idea. Before the energy has left their face, the objections land: “Yes, but it’s not in the budget.” When criticism is the first response, it doesn’t improve the idea; it ends the conversation. Soon, people edit themselves before they speak, and only the safest ideas reach a decision.

Here’s a simple practice: swap “Yes, but…” for “Yes, and…”

“Yes” means you acknowledge the idea before judging it. “And” means you build on it long enough to discover what it could become. The comma creates a half-second of listening before the response.

Try these three responses:

“What would it take to make this work?”
“How might we test it?”
“What has to be true for this to succeed?”

“How” assumes possibilities exist. “Might” permits experimentation rather than demanding a promise. “We” makes the search collaborative.

Stop asking, “Do you think this will work?” That question makes people choose a side. Ask instead, “What has to be true for this to succeed?” The first asks for a verdict; the second invites an investigation.

Fail on Purpose

At WAGiLabs, the creativity nonprofit I run for kids, we ask students to design the best treehouse they can imagine. You get fun answers: paint it yellow, add a slide, install all-weather carpeting.

Then we ask them to design the worst treehouse ever: too small, impossible to reach, or ready to fall apart. The answers come instantly, usually with a lot of laughter. Describing failure is often easier than describing success.

Once children can describe failure, they can reverse it: add a rope ladder, make the structure modular enough to move, or create an attached doghouse or birdhouse.

When brainstorming failure, ask your team:

What would guarantee that this idea fails?
What would we never do? The more outrageous, the better.
How could we flip each failure—and each “never”—into a useful strategy?

You’ll end up with a smarter plan than a straightforward brainstorm because you’ll see the flop before you search for the win.

The next time someone says your idea will never work, don’t argue. Say thanks. You may have just found the blind spot.

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