If you are an entrepreneur or entrepreneur-in-waiting, then you should have a look at this for inspiration. HSBC Business has produced a series of four booklets comprising a total of 100 real world mini-case studies on how to do things a little differently for success. Some of the examples are well-known companies such as Lufthansa and Red Bull, others are relatively unknown.
One tells the story of Richard Tait and the game Cranium. He and his partner had ordered 27,000 copies of Cranium with a manufacturer but couldn’t get any of the main toy distributors to sell it. His inspiration was to sell where the customers were rather than in toy stores. His target customers were trendy, young professionals, so he persuaded Starbucks to sell it in the coffee houses. From this initial success, the game was worldwide hit and and he went on to sell out to Hasbro for $77 million. Nice.
I originally got a hardcopy in the post but they’ve been made available on-line as PDFs so if you are searching for a little entrepreneurial creativity, download them now.