· It’s good to have ideas.
· It’s better to make something out of them.
Sitting around a table talking about what should be done is different from doing something. I’ve often told the story here of having lots of ideas about using computers to handle the masses of applications we received while opening Mirage and Treasure Island. It was a double-edged tale – it was great to get so many of them, but it was difficult to handle them efficiently. Shortly after the Mirage opened, I started looking for ways to collect, collate, and store applications using computers. Trouble was that networked computers were in their infancy back then, as were the apps that powered them. As we prepared to launch the recruitment for Bellagio in 1998, we installed 100 terminals in the employment center and asked applicants to come in and complete the application questions on those computers. The data went directly into a database designed to handle the information without any human intervention. That’s when the creative idea I had in 1990 finally became an innovation. It wasn’t perfect – inventions rarely are, but it was a start that eventually became the online applicant collection and tracking system unveiled at Wynn for its opening in 2003. If you’ve got a good idea, stick with it even if it initially looks like it might be difficult to implement. That’s the way creative thinking becomes great innovations today.
Theodore Levitt (1925 – 2006): German-born American economist and a professor at the Harvard Business School.
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