Originally posted by: JS80
Originally posted by: mugs
Originally posted by: JS80
While an undergraduate student at Yale, Mr. Smith wrote a paper on the basic premise of FedEx and the hub-based distribution model for airfreight. What grade do you suppose a paper containing one of the best value creation ideas of the last quarter century would get from one of the finest academic institutions in the land? How about a "C." That's right, FedEx was only a "C" idea.
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University management professor in response to the paper written by the student Fred Smith proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp. - FedEx)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedex
A common story is that Fred Smith got a C at Yale University on the paper where he came up with the idea that became FedEx. In an article he wrote for the October 2002 issue of Fortune Small Business he said that he doesn't actually know what grade he got. He said he probably didn't get a very good grade, though, because the paper was not very well thought out. In a similar case, a C on a paper by Gregory Watson led to the passage of the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In a recent interview, FedEx founding officer Michael Basch debunked the often-told story that the creator of FedEx, Fred Smith, got a "C" grade for his idea for FedEx at Yale and was told by his professor that the concept would never work.
In fact, the idea that got a bad grade was for something else and Smith said it was a dumb idea and the guy evaluated it properly. What's interesting, though, is that the 'dumb idea' did eventually evolve into the concept of FedEx. And that's Basch's key point: innovation is generally evolutionary, not revolutionary.
