Lesson 1: How to Challenge Conventional Wisdom to Thrive in Business

Course content (3 lessons)

Debbie Sterling disrupted the ‘pink aisle’ by building toys and media that encourage young girls to get into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). She's a trailblazer helping to create the next generation of female engineers. In this video she shares the importance of challenging conventional wisdom in industries and seeing rejection as a learning experience.

[MUSIC PLAYING] DEBBIE STERLING: I think the advice that I would give anyone who's trying to disrupt an industry is to just challenge conventional wisdom constantly. You don't always need to reinvent the wheel, but if you have a gut instinct or feeling about something that is wrong out in the world that it shouldn't be that way, trust your gut and when you face rejection, which is absolutely inevitable because people-- not everybody is an innovator or a disruptor most people are comfortable with the status quo.
So be respectful and get as much feedback and advice that you can but really stick with your instinct, follow your gut, and persevere regardless. You have to be able to overcome rejection because you will face that on the road to disruption. I think I created a new market because the problem in the old market was that everyone in the children's toy and media industry had this conventional wisdom that boy play patterns were construction and superheroes and girl play patterns were dolls and princesses.
And so when I came up with GoldieBlox it didn't fit in either of those camps. Well, I think girls could be superheroes and I think girls could build. And there wasn't anything like that. And so when it launched, it actually launched a girl construction toy slash girl action figure category that at the time nobody know knew what to do with because it was brand new.
And in fact so much of our success was on online sales because it didn't need to fit in an aisle that didn't exist. And so we really took off online. Now, we've read headlines of Target removing their gender labeling and this whole movement around changing that conventional wisdom of boys are building and superheroes and girls are princesses and dolls.
I mean, now this is becoming the new normal, which is fantastic. But we had to break through and create a new category in order to convince people that the times are changing. There will be doors slammed in your face every which way all of the time and you just can't let it stop you. Every door that's been slammed in my face-- there's always a back door emergency exit, [LAUGHING] alternate path then that becomes the path forward because it has to be and then in retrospect I look back and I'm like wow, that was actually the right path.
That was the best path to take even though at the time, it didn't feel that way. So you keep moving forward and zig zagging your way. And as long as you don't give up, and you stay optimistic and keep charting a way forward, you're going to get a lot of no's but if you talk to enough people you'll get yeses too.
And so you just follow the yeses. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Lesson 1: How to Challenge Conventional Wisdom to Thrive in Business

Course content (3 lessons)

Module 1: Challenge Conventional Wisdom

01 |Module 2: How to Breakthrough Tough Times

02 |Module 3: How to Disrupt an Industry