Wisdom from Seth Godin,

Hey, Steve Jobs himself couldn't do it at Verizon. The list of big companies that didn't jump on game changing ideas is huge. Almost as long as the list of great companies you didn't buy stock in when you had the chance.

The iPhone/AT&T deal is almost certainly the exception that proves Godin's law of bizdev: No is the default answer. The spreadsheets and the marketing team and the CFO and the lawyers have no trouble at all defending the status quo, because, it's their status quo. They created it and they like it that way. Bizdev deals like this almost always fail because the potential for upside seems too small compared to the mammoth disruption that organizations imagine will beset them.

Plan on going under, over or around instead.

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Inevitably we are faced with the challenge of changing the status quo at some point(s) in our lives. Most people are probably going to say no, but that doesn't mean that your idea, strategy, etc. is wrong. The more radical your idea, the more no's you are going to get.