Thread by @daitha12

Once there was an ice cream company. One of their businesses was was selling ice cream to employees in large offices after lunch. They would park their vehicle with ice cream in front of the office. Employees would come out after lunch to buy ice cream.

The ice cream was served in procelain cups. This had a number of problems. First, after each employee ate the ice cream the cup had to be washed before serving the next person; second, however thoroughly the cup were washed, some one would complain they were not clean enough:

and third , the process of washing and re- washing a number of cups used to break.

So the top management of the company decided to have a brain storming session to find a solution to the cup problem. The person moderating the session explained the rules of the brain storming.

One of the rules was that no matter how stupid or impractical an idea may sound, it will not be criticized or discarded because brain storming is an idea generation exercise, not an idea evaluation exercise. Evaluation will come later.

The top management team spent more than an hour discussing the problem. No solution could be found. Finally out of frustration one of the managers said " I don't give a damn what happens to the cups. For all I care let the customers eat cups.

An absolutely idiotic idea. But because it was a brain storming session the person taking notes faithfully wrote down " Let the customers eat the cups."

Next day when a smaller group sat down to evaluate the ideas based on particularly, cost etc, they said"

Eh, look at this one: let the customers eat the cups.
Why not? Why don't we serve ice cream in cups which the customers can eat with ice cream?"

And the Cone ice cream was born. Now the company makes profit on the ice cream and on the cups.

DO NOT DISMISS AN IDEA BECAUSE IT SOUNDS IMPRACTICAL ON THE FACE OF IT.