I designed the first digital stopwatch for Heuer, which was naturally a revolution for the time. Heuer liked the model that I had personally shown him. As he then presented it to the circa 25 sales managers present, he suggested that everyone should comment as it was passed around. The first said “I can’t sell this!”. He reasoned that the stopwatch was completely different to their usual products. Everyone else around the table shared this opinion – I thought at first that I’d spent half a year working for absolutely nothing. As the stopwatch came back round to Jack Heuer, he said “Your comments were all very interesting. We will be selling this stopwatch despite those views. YOU will be selling it”. End of discussion.

Half a year later, Heuer was making one third of its turnover from this stopwatch alone. That means that Heuer and I were right, and his sales managers were wrong. I didn’t accuse the marketing people of that though, because it’s not something they are trained for. A designer works in, and for, the future and one can expect that an employer also has a vision of the future. Marketing and sales staff, however, have to concentrate on what’s on the table, relate to what they have been selling up to now. Marketing has no basis to judge a revolutionary new product, can’t make an informed sales forecast. One has to rely on instinct alone.