CreativityRulz

This is such an amazing an inspiring story. I'll definitely be sharing this with my network of friends and colleagues!

This is so depressing, I wish I could have made $600 dollars over the summer.

The best I would be able to do would probably mow a lawn (using my lawnmower).
Maybe buy $5 worth of cola or food product and sell it.

I guess I'm not very good at making money :P

I don't quite understand why it takes a Stanford class to teach these young entrepreneurs how to "scalp" restaurant reservations. I'm a practicing psychologist in Palo Alto, and I wouldn't appreciate standing in line for hours only to find that students had booked the spots ahead of time to entice me to pay them.

It's not hard to make $600 in 2 hours. I treat depression in college women who are nightclub dancers on the weekends and make more than that. Drug sellers also make more than that.

It's hard to make money doing something innovative and worthwhile that makes our community better. The exercises described here are not impressive, nor do they improve the lives of others.

Let me respond to the last post... The goal of this simple exercise is to demonstrate that opportunities are everywhere. Even when you think that you have very little - such as five dollars - there are endless ways to create value. Of course, some people choose to "create value" by doing immoral or illegal things. But, most people don't.

I also respectfully disagree with the poster: It is NOT hard to make money doing something innovative and worthwhile. This happens every day! In fact, the exercise described above has grown in scope over the past three years and is now known as the Global Innovation Tournament. Students are given a simple object, such as a post-it pad or a handful of rubber bands, and are challenged to create something of value with them, and value can be measured in any way they want. The results are impressive and innovative! In fact, almost all of the projects are crafted to create social value. I will post a new blog soon describing this project and showing some of the results.

- Tina

I had the same thought about the scalping. I also find it hard to believe that the winning team truly spent only two hours searching for a client by contacting several companies, negotiating the price, discussing requirements for the presentation, creating the presentation, practicing, and finally presenting.

Yes, the point is that there are innovative and worthwhile opportunities if we spent the effort, but something about this post rubs me the wrong way. At first it was inspiring, but the scalping issue and hyperbole bugs me. Look, anyone on a salary, such as a Walmart cashier, goes in with no money and comes out with money. Wow! A return of infinite percentage! It's highly reminiscient of self-help you-can-be-wealthy books.

I like the ideas themselves, though, and I really look forward to reading your posts, especially about ideas that add social value. I guess these are just pet peeves of mine.

Great story. I think the objections are short-sighted. Maybe if someone made a regular business of reservation selling I might object, but as a short term strategy it was brilliant and I appreciate it. And as far as doing something that made the world better--that wasn't part of the assignment.

I appreciate how this story demonstrates how it's ideas not how much financial backing you have that makes or breaks a business. This affirms my faith in entrepreneurship.

Great article

I was not impressed by this article. The story of scalped restaurant reservations was depressing — I cannot believe that people would pay $20 to a middleman for a free (and freely-cancelable) reservation. Had I been approached I certainly would not only have refused, but also reported this behavior to the restaurant owners, who would equally as certainly have taken steps to stop it. (Think for a moment how nice it is to live in a reasonably civilized society, rather than a corrupt one where bribery is a part of everyday life.)

I was seriously appalled that the author seems to admire this parasitical and sleazy behavior.

The other ideas presented are more clever and less repugnant, but it is still unclear to what extent they really satisfied the assignment. I liked the tire-pressure idea, until I realized that a pressure gauge and bike pump together cost significantly more than $5.

Likewise, to the extent that the project's only requirement was money-making, the students who sold their presentation time succeeded admirably. But since the assignment also included a presentation, and they made no such presentation, it sounds to me like they failed. Furthermore, their strategy was entirely dependent on the assumption that the professor would allow her classroom to be used for an advertisement — but some professors would certainly refuse this, as a matter of principle. (After all, a university would not allow a professor to sell advertising time during her lectures — so what happened to this $650 in the end? It came at a a cost to the university's reputation.)

The point is not that the ideas mentioned in the article aren't clever or creative; several of them are. But they don't just 'think outside the box' of the assignment – they also violate the norms of responsible academic behavior. What happened to the students who 'played by the rules'? After reading this article, they might get the idea that they are being laughed at by the very professor who made those rules. (I realize that is not her intent, but I think it a very real side-effect.)

Of course, to some extent my arguments are irrelevant — because the same traits of pushiness, brashness, shamelessness, rule-breaking, and sometimes outright dishonesty which make for success in this assignment also often (alas) make for success in the real world. That's just how things are and we have to live with it — but I don't see why we should be expected to celebrate it.