How to pitch a brilliant idea

Kimberly D. Elsbach

HBR, 2003

Premise

• Entrepreneurs come up with great pitches to show how their plans or concepts are attractive, timely durable, and high-margin

• Corporate decision makers don’t “get it”

• Why?

3 prototypes• Showrunner: “professionals” who combine

creative inspiration with production and technical know-how

• Artist: quirky and unpolished, prefer creativity over reality

• Neophyte: tend to be – or act as if they were – young, inexperienced, and naïve, but are prepared to “do the impossible.”

Project yourself as one of these three creative types and convince the “catcher” s/he is a creative collaborator and you improve your chances of selling the idea

Traits we use to stereotype “creatives”

• Unconventionality

• Intuitiveness

• Sensitivity

• Narcissism

• Passion

• Youth

We use visual and verbal matches with these models and remember only the characteristics that identify the pitcher as a particular type

How to succeed

• Catchers overwhelmingly look for showrunners

• Artists and neophytes can wind through enchantment and charm

• Showrunners are also the most dangerous because they can blind the catcher through glitz