THE MAN FROM ZERO LAB

Vertical integration was the chief principle on which the company was founded, and was, for the most part, its North Star for the first decade. But then the leadership and innovation development program the company funded at universities across the world began to bear fruit, and there were suddenly more ideas for new projects than the firm knew what to do with, a number that not only exceeded its projections but also its capacity and capability. Disaffection rippled through the ranks. Come Monday morning, at the general staff meeting, a man stood up and lifted his only remaining arm—the other had been lost in a motorcycle accident, (drag race on westbound span of bridge, thrown three hundred feet, bike skidded three hundred more). “I know what to do,” he said. His brother, he explained, had recently left a firm that dealt with precisely these types of issues to start a boutique firm of his own. “He can solve any problem,” he said. “We could bring him aboard,” he said. On the strength of this recommendation—for the man was a valued employee who had once saved the life of the CEO’s daughter at a company party when she went from standing in the shallow end of the pool to flailing in the deep end—the brother was hired. He created an in-house department that was dubbed Zero Lab; all new projects were modeled out for solutions from the first, after which they matched technological demands to product design. Prototypes were suddenly plentiful. Executives stopped by at all times to inspect them, poke and prod, ask questions that could before only have been imagined but could now be articulated and resolved. At the next company party, the CEO’s daughter, now seventeen, approached the motorcycle man. He raised his arm the way he had in the meeting. The story had gotten around. “You have now saved two-thirds of my family from drowning,” she said. The man nodded with exaggerated sagacity. “Let your mom know,” he said. The girl crimsoned. “She’s not with us,” she said. “She has left. Greener pastures, she said. I think she went off for a guy in Alberta.” The man stopped nodding. He took his arm down. “I do not know what to do,” he said. His brother, coming across the lawn with a drink in one hand and a plate of food in the other, would later report that both the man and the girl were canting toward tears. He tripped, sending the food flying. He knew how to distort his face in slow motion, and he did, at the same time speaking just as slowly. “Nooooo,” he said. They both turned toward him. One was laughing and one was about to. He could solve any problem.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas