FDR Was A Prototyper
The National Archives has a pretty neat drawing on their site from FDR. He drew the above in pencil on a sheet of legal paper on April 12, 1937. It’s a prototype.
I didn’t understand the importance of having a prototype in hand for many years, but my pal Diego made me take stock in it when I began reading his blog five years ago. Growing up in the media business as well as the motor racing business, I didn’t realize until it later on that the people who win come prepared with prototypes. When I worked in newspapers, the editorial meetings were a hothouse — an out-and-out pitch fest from writers to the editorial team, something that intimidated the hell out of me the first time I experienced it — and the writers who had the best stories to tell got their stuff assigned. You learned pretty fast that you needed a good (verbal) prototype.
Racing innovation worked the same way, but in a different order. The entire season was one moving prototype, but internally the guys who stood out and made the biggest difference on the car were bringing new parts, new aero ideas and new pit stop strategies to light both in meetings when it was appropriate and outside of the regimented schedule. They elevated themselves and the team by showing a real, live prototype of the future.
Recently at work I’ve seen this whole thing ring true once again. My colleague and team member Adam Morath had a very novel (but expensive) idea that I thought we’d have a horrible time selling internally because it was such a mental leap from the normal course of business. So, on his own he cooked up a rough :30 edit of the idea on his computer — compiling images and doing some voiceover, all backed by an inspirational Boards of Canada song — that, in all honesty, sold the thing like nothing else I’ve ever seen. It’s since been passed up to the president of our company and I think it’s model example of how to get something going.
Prototypes are cool. Cook one up and see how it travels.
From The National Archives:
A newspaper once referred to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “the nation’s No. 1 unlicensed architect.” As President, Roosevelt took great interest in the designs for many of the construction projects sponsored by his administration, sometimes reviewing drawings and offering suggestions. FDR was also an avid amateur historian and wanted to be sure that his papers and collections were preserved in one place. To that end, he donated his papers to the National Archives and built the nation’s first Presidential library on his estate in Hyde Park, New York. In 1937 the President made this sketch of the proposed facility. The drawing reflects Roosevelt’s stylistic preference for the Dutch fieldstone farmhouses common to his native Hudson River Valley.
