Monopoly was created during the Great Depression and to save costs, the game did not come with tokens to indicate your space on the board. People were encouraged to use small objects that they had at home — buttons, pennies, earrings, and yes, a thimble. The thimble has become one of the prized tokens in the iconic game.
In another case of relying on what is on hand, Hewlett-Packard’s Golden Banana award is modeled after a real banana which was all a manager had to give immediate recognition to an engineer who had solved a vexing problem. It is now a corporate symbol and engineering’s most coveted award.
Anyone who has seen a child open presents knows that the box is often the most popular “gift,” and many summer days have been spent creating forts or spaceships out of boxes that were laying around the house. This desirability helped the lowly cardboard box to be enshrined in the Toy Hall of Fame.
Too often, we use our lack of something as an excuse to delay. The next time you don’t have exactly what you need, think of the thimble, banana, and box and see if improvising with something on hand doesn’t get the job done just as well.
