A Wren Says

What does reading and pizza have in common? Not much, unless you are a major pizza executive looking for new ideas. The origins of the Book It! Programs were simple: What if you could encourage kids to read by rewarding them with pizza?

Art Gunther and Bud Gates, the originators of the program, were sitting at dinner thinking of their own problem. Gunther’s son needed help with reading. And from their that little idea spun off into a 40 year, beloved, and well-researched program.

You can take the angle of this is just a marketing ploy to get more families into their Pizza Hut restaurants, and that would be fair. But you can also take the angle of starting small. What is the problem that you are dealing with?

Gunther and Gates designed the idea of the program based on the idea that families and schools were interested in increasing their children’s reading levels. They took that problem, massaged it, and designed a program that could work as a solution.

Every product should help the customer solve a problem of some sort. If you look at your own life, your family, and your friends, what are the problems that keep coming up? What solutions are waiting to be found.

You don’t have to try and start by coming up with the next million dollar idea. You just need to find one problem and a way to solve it.