Dancing in Your Garage

Dance a little in your garage... you might develop something new.

Consider the garage inventor or the guy with the outlandish idea that flies in the face of accepted thinking – dances to his/her own drum.

Why? Because these people are of the special breed who make new things happen, invent new solutions or solve those impossible-to-solve challenges – the ones accepted science says are impossible to solve.

What drives them? A never give-up attitude for sure. But it’s always much more than that.

Here’s the story:

In Praise of Crazy Ideas

“In 1971, Judah Folkman, then a 38-year-old surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, proposed a radical idea: tumors in the body send out signals that trick surrounding tissues into helping them grow. The signals instruct these tissues to sprout new blood vessels, which can deliver oxygen and other nutrients to cancer cells. He suggested designing a new kind of drug, one that would block those signals, preventing or destroying the new blood vessel growth and starving tumors.”

“Cancer at the time was treated mainly by flooding the body with poison (chemotherapy) or searing it with radiation. Folkman’s idea of subtly targeting some mysterious communication channel between tumor and host was met with scorn. When he spoke about his idea at scientific meetings, Folkman said, the room would empty out: “Everybody had to go to the bathroom at once.” One year, the criticism was so intense that Boston Children’s Hospital convened an external committee to review his research. The committee judged his work to be of little to no value. He was asked to resign as chief of surgery should he choose to continue the studies. He resigned and, fortunately for all of us, continued his research.”

“Today, Folkman’s thesis underlies nearly all modern approaches to treating cancer, from anti-angiogenesis therapy to cancer immunotherapy. The work has resulted in dozens of FDA-approved drugs that have helped hundreds of thousands of cancer patients, and has inspired the development of a broad new category of drugs, VEGF inhibitors, that can reverse a certain form of blindness (that caused by macular degeneration).”

Please go here for the whole article.

And, here, too, for six multi-billion dollar companies that were started in the founder’s garage… all this proves to me that when you hear, "That's a dumb idea or That can't be done"... go ahead and make it so. Dance in your garage.

6 $25 Billion Companies That Started in a Garage

“Every new company has to begin somewhere. These 6 world-famous ones--worth more than $25 billion each--started in garages.”

“All of these renowned companies have proven that success truly depends on determination, faith, and hard work. No matter where you start your business or how much money you originally put into it, passion, commitment, and courage are often all you need to make your company a success.”

“In case you need objective proof, here are some of the biggest companies in the world, all of which were started in their founders' garages.”

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Lee Ann Womack - I Hope You Dance- 2000