“Nottingham…as a college intern, ate lunch by the pond of the General Motors Technical Center, envisioning a corporate life for himself–until one of the company’s top designers disabused him. “He said, ‘John, this is the greatest R&D center in the world,’ ” Nottingham recalls. “ I’m just drinking it in. I’m just saying, Wow, I’m in heaven, feeding the ducks. Then he dropped a bomb on me. He says, ‘It’s amazing that the most innovative ideas that General Motors has come up with have come from the outside, small companies.’ And I stopped in my tracks, the crumbs going to the ducks stopped in midair. And at that point my life changed. I said if I’m going to be effective, it’s not going to be inside General Motors. It’s going to be outside.”
From The Invention Machine: Cleveland Duo Churns Out Ideas Worth Billions
