Dick Brown

Industry leader Dick Brown on innovation

Dick Brown is a serial entrepreneur who’s launched more than 50 new products into the U.S. market including the $1 billion SoundBlaster® soundcard for computers.

Dick is also the person who started RadioShack® Computers (with Tandy Computers) in 1980. He now keeps himself occupied as president of a company marketing and selling Tunebug™ ultra-portable sound generators—little devices that turn just about any smooth surface into a flat panel speaker. Here’s perspective from Dick:

Q: A lot of inventors come to you with new products and technologies. How do you assess a new product?

Dick: I have my own sequence for assessing products. First, I look to see if it’s cool. If I think it’s cool, I’ll ask a lot of people I know what they think. If their impressions are also favorable, I’ll connect with the inventor. At this stage, I’m looking for confidence that the IP (intellectual property) is adequate, because you want a protected market. Next, I look to see if it’s manufacturable and, assuming so, how much it will cost to make. This will then allow me to consider what it would need to be priced at relative to what the market will bear. Only if I’m satisfied with this will I look to proceed.

Q: You started out by saying you look for coolness in a product. How important is the Cool Factor?

Dick: I can’t put a number on it, but it’s big. Of course, there’s all sorts of cool—it often depends on the market and the audience. For example, what a child finds cool is different from what I find cool. It could be a color, it could be a feature. Whatever it is, coolness can make a big difference.

Q: Stepping back for a second, what’s the general value of innovation?

Dick: Without innovation we’d all be walking around carrying 5-pound telephones. More broadly, innovation is the lifeblood of business and society. Innovation creates new opportunities, and those that don’t innovate will die.

Q: Speaking of innovations, what lesson can you share with inventors based on your innovation experiences with RadioShack and Tandy Computers?

Dick: I learned the absolute importance of customer orientation. We did well when we had total customer orientation on our products, services, and sales. The fact is there are lots of new products out there, but without the right customer orientation, the chances of success are greatly reduced.

Q: And what about learning from your experience picking up U.S. distribution of the SoundBlaster and turning it from zero into a $1 billion seller?

Dick: You can invent a really cool product, but until you can effectively position it in the marketplace, package it, and sell it, it ain’t done. Many inventors treat these details as an after-thought, but the reality is 99 out of 100 won’t get to market by treating them as an after-thought. Do yourself a lot of good: find a firm or align with marketing and sales people who are as good or better than your invention—you’ll need them.

Q: Any last words of wisdom for inventors?

Dick: A great idea simply isn’t good enough. You need to have a great product and you also need to show people that great product. Also, building on my previous point, seek out marketing and sales counsel wherever you can find it, because you’ll want as much help as possible knowing how the customer will respond, and how you can make them respond more favorably to your product.

Q: What’s your favorite invention and why?

Dick: RadioShack’s TRS-80 computer. For me, this computer was life-changing, paradigm-changing. This standalone computer—it no longer needed a mainframe—changed the way I worked, the way I lived, the way I thought about the world.