I always described my work at Glaxo in Advanced Technology as insane. I was dealing in concepts and ideas that were way beyond the ‘thinking horizon’ of the folk there (btw this is not arrogance simply the different horizons of Advanced Technology - a decade away and their immediate concerns). I recognised early on that to be successful the ideas could not be ‘Roger’s idea’ with the danger of being associated with a lunatic but rather they had to be owned by others to advocate and champion the idea. This led to the problem of attribution, when someone else mentioned ‘expansion into consumer informatics’ was it because I had seeded the thinking or did ‘their’ idea come from elsewhere?
This led to my practice of giving ‘odd’ names to the concepts in discussion - for example calling lifestyle pharmaceuticals happyates. I could then see if others used the term and trace back ideas.
Combining the themes - that I must be mad to work in a job where all my genius ideas were stolen by others and that any recognition would be in 10 years long after I had gone - I likened the role to that of a submariner. Mad to do the job with job satisfaction being the bang long after the torpedo was fired. This led naturally to my describing the techniques as the ‘linguistic torpedo’.
Of course the whole use of the Linguistic Torpedo is subversive and so I was intrigued and amused to see it explained and used by a friend and colleague without any attribution. c’est la vie
If you have the time and the patience, apply the "linguistic torpedo." This involves packaging the solution by giving it a snappy name that embodies its purpose, then deliberately positioning the solution at three key meetings. At each meeting, you must mention the name you have given the solution at least three times and briefly explain it once. The reason for this iteration is that people come to key meetings to present and not to listen. You must be prepared, like the submariner, to wait for the explosion and echo to come back to you in the form of a request to deliver or explain the packaged knowledge or technique. This process can take between a year and 18 months in a global corporation.
Victor Newman - Blog