3 Nobodies and 1 Silly Putty

Silly idea huh? So how did we get this niffty little glob of goo? Researching substitutes for rubber in the early 1940s, James Wright took two very different agents - boric acid and silicone oil and combined them to form a gooey rubber like material. Working for General Electric, Wright was looking for an alternative to products made with rubber.

For the first couple of years no useful product was discovered for the inorganic polymer. After sending out samples to scientist all over the globe, a sample landed in the hands of a small toy store owner. The toy store owner contacted a marketing consultant to help her market the new gooey toy in her catalog of toys. Within no time the new $2 toy became her best seller next to a 50 cent box of Crayons. Despite the success, the toy store owner dropped it from the catalog.

Seeing its huge potential, the marketing consultant, already deeply in debt, borrowed $147 to buy a batch of the putty. Packaging one ounce balls of putty into small plastic eggs priced at $1, he sold 250,000 "Silly Putty" eggs within 3 days. In 1961, Silly Putty became a global success making a huge splash in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The ultimate reach of Silly Putty was landing on the Moon in 1968 courtesy of the Apollo 8 astronauts.

The characters in this story, the scientist, the small shop owner, and the marketer all made a lasting mark in American history. At a time when the economy was not at its best, each one took a risk at trying something that had never been done before. The all share the spark of entrepreneurship within their DNA.

So who do you identify with the most in the story? Are you the scientist, looking for ways to improve what is in danger? Are you the small business owner, trying to sail your boat through the sea of endless goods and services? Or are you the marketer, whose goal is to take all the discoveries of the scientist and the small resources of the little shop owner and fuse them together into an opportunity to make a lasting impression in the global market?