# Bob Sager

Bob Sager develops creative-thinking methods and business strategies, and uses them in corporate training to help teams generate ideas and build lasting innovation habits.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/bob-sager/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobsager
- LinkedIn followers: 20,166
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-09-28

## Summary

Bob Sager is most useful for corporate creative-thinking training with named methods and follow-up.

- Best for: Corporate learning and development teams booking a creative-thinking keynote or workshop for managers.
- Not for: Consumer brands buying measured reach through paid social, product seeding, or sponsorship with audience numbers.
- Check first: Ask for measured training outcomes and full details of the follow-up system.

### Takeaways

- Eliminate or Minify uses Polly Pocket, LegalZoom and McDonald's to change an existing offer.
- The ABC's of Bad Ideas lowers pressure and looks for promising ideas among bad ones.
- Training needs scheduled sessions and follow-up to build lasting innovation habits.

## Main ideas

- **Creative thinking is a set of named methods, not a personality trait**: Creativity, in Sager's posts, is not open-ended brainstorming or inspiration. They repeatedly point to an umbrella practice called Scientific Creative Thinking Methods, then break it into techniques that can be taught, practiced and reused. Two techniques are named: Eliminate or Minify and The ABC's of Bad Ideas. The pattern is consistent — name the method, walk through a recognizable example, then direct readers to a session, webinar or article where it is taught. The core idea is creativity as a repeatable process rather than a gift.
- **Take things away to make a business distinct**: Among the named methods, subtraction gets the fullest explanation. Sager argues that stripping a product, service or process down to what customers value most — and deliberately giving up whatever attracts customers a business is better off leaving to competitors — is an advanced way to create something a market has not seen. The McDonald's case makes the reasoning clearest: the brothers changed what a restaurant was rather than improving the existing format, and the single most important thing they removed was the wait.
- **Generate bad ideas on purpose to get past the pressure of being good on demand**: The second named technique turns the usual instruction on its head. Sager teaches a method called The ABC's of Bad Ideas, in which a group deliberately sets out to produce bad ideas. The post gives two reasons: asking for bad ideas removes the pressure people feel when told to be creative on command, and a set of ten or more bad ideas will almost always contain one or more that could actually work. The exercise is presented as reliably useful, not a matter of luck.
- **Safe positioning is forgettable, and that is a business problem**: Sager's recurring commercial argument is that a strategy can be perfectly acceptable and still fail because acceptable is invisible. A position that does not make customers see a business as different, better or more valuable is easy to ignore. The writing puts it bluntly: safe is boring and forgettable. That's why Sager treats differentiation as the point of the strategy work alongside the training.
- **Most corporate training fails, and the fix is what happens after the session**: Sager's most direct answer to whether training produces lasting change starts with an analogy, not a claim about competitors: an exercise product can work and still fail its buyers because good intentions lose to ingrained habits, which is why testimonials carry a results-not-typical disclaimer. Sager says many corporate training programs fail the same way. Their approach differs in two ways: sessions are funded and already on the calendar, so they happen, and a structured follow-up system reinforces the work until new thinking habits form. The stated goal is a culture of innovation rather than a temporary spark. Ask for the follow-up system's content and duration before buying.
- **Persuasion sits underneath the creative methods**: Sager says the business strategies they build draw on more than creative-thinking techniques. They describe over thirty years of studying and applying the psychological, sociological and biological factors that cause people to embrace or ignore an offer, grouping them under the clinical-sounding name Behavioral Science. The stated intent is to teach influence and persuasion principles ethically, alongside idea-generation methods, so an offer is perceived as something a customer must have rather than as unremarkable. In this framework, a good idea alone is not enough.
- **Ideas come out of ordinary life, run through structured play**: Sager's examples rarely come from boardroom case studies. They draw on personal experience, then pass through an invented game — a practical link between the methods and everyday observation. What's The BIG Idea? gives players ten cards, each with a single word, and asks them to combine any two into an idea for a product, service or business. Sager says they invented it fifteen years ago and have used it in corporate training ever since.
- **The game is a product in its own right, and it is heading for a show**: Sager's creative-thinking work extends beyond training and speaking. Their writing describes a productized game that exists independently of any client engagement, and the post moves from describing play to casting. The evolution is explicit: a tool used inside corporate sessions is being developed into a competitive show format. Show sponsorship opportunities are available on request; ask for rates, audience figures and sponsorship deliverables.
- **A tension worth noticing: the free strategy that got dismissed**: One post records a problem in Sager's own approach rather than a win. Because a strategy bundled as a training bonus carries no substantial fee, they observe that it can be undervalued—and describe a case where it was dismissed before review. The post sharpens the picture of how the work is sold: training and strategy are related offers, sometimes bundled and sometimes paid, and bundling has a cost. It is the posts' most candid account of the commercial side.

## Work to read

- [The ABC's of Bad Ideas, tested live on an auditor trainer](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_%F0%9D%90%87%F0%9D%90%9E%F0%9D%90%AB%F0%9D%90%9E-%F0%9D%90%A2%F0%9D%90%AC-%F0%9D%90%B0%F0%9D%90%A1%F0%9D%90%B2-%F0%9D%90%B2%F0%9D%90%A8%F0%9D%90%AE-%F0%9D%90%AC%F0%9D%90%A1%F0%9D%90%A8%F0%9D%90%AE%F0%9D%90%A5%F0%9D%90%9D-activity-7424455571166265344-B2IR)
- [Polly Pocket, Legal Zoom and McDonald's as examples of Eliminate or Minify](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_what-do-polly-pocket-legal-zoom-and-mcdonalds-activity-7405248883267698688-epVE)
- [Casting a creative-idea game into a show](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_what-if-creativity-was-a-game-what-if-it-activity-7495098951495372800-xMZ0)
- [From a staged anniversary surprise to an Operation and Vacation business idea](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_can-a-kidnapping-lead-to-a-successful-business-activity-7479877443911258114-pdtU)
- [Why corporate training fails—and what follows](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_%F0%9D%90%91%F0%9D%90%9E%F0%9D%90%AC%F0%9D%90%AE%F0%9D%90%A5%F0%9D%90%AD%F0%9D%90%AC-%F0%9D%90%8D%F0%9D%90%A8%F0%9D%90%AD-%F0%9D%90%93%F0%9D%90%B2%F0%9D%90%A9%F0%9D%90%A2%F0%9D%90%9C%F0%9D%90%9A%F0%9D%90%A5-a-while-activity-7457059534595903488-R-t1)
- [Undervaluing a free strategy—and a published article on Mascot Marketing](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_safe-is-dangerous-in-business-it-is-as-indistinguishable-activity-7457785405443325952-Ww8l)
- [Behavioral science underpins the creative methods](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bobsager_there-is-a-hidden-secret-i-have-never-revealed-activity-7404154091742035968-PUXR)

## Brand relationships

- **FDI Alliance International Magazine** (mention)
- **Real World MBA** (disclosed_partnership)
- **What's The BIG Idea?** (disclosed_partnership)

## Partnerships

The posts show two routes for a brand to work with Bob Sager: sponsor the What's The BIG Idea? creative-thinking show they are casting, or book corporate training in the Scientific Creative Thinking Methods they teach. Sponsorship appears once, as an availability statement with no rates, placements, or dates; ask for those details in conversation. Training is positioned as a funded, calendar-scheduled session plus a follow-up system designed to turn new thinking into habits. Sager says an unadvertised strategy is included at no extra charge, but recounts a case where a client's board dismissed that free strategy without reviewing it, so decide in advance how to handle such extras internally. They also note that a separate, already-developed strategy is being discussed with one company on a first-come basis, making it a live constraint rather than a standing offer.

## Alternatives

- Jen Clinehens: Choose Jen Clinehens over Bob Sager when the learning and development goal is not creative thinking in general but helping experienced managers turn their expertise into a sellable solo consulting or advisory offer. The two available posts focus on that exact problem: most advice about starting solo consulting overcomplicates things, and the offer is the business. Clinehens describes a Demand-First Offer that sits between the skills a person already has and what the market already knows it needs, and warns that building a website, a logo, or a LinkedIn posting plan before validating the offer kills most solo consulting businesses. The second post names three mistakes — failing to package skills into an offer clients want to buy, failing to stand out in a crowded professional services market, and lacking a client-getting system — and cites a client who added $50k in recurring revenue after packaging existing skills into a Demand-First Offer. For a cohort of managers considering independent consulting, or for an internal programme about commercialising expertise, that is a more direct match than a creative-thinking workshop. It also gives managers a concrete validation step: test the offer with real people before building the business around it.
- Philip Speidel: Choose Philip Speidel over Bob Sager when the manager audience is an ecommerce or performance-marketing team and the actual problem is producing and testing paid-social creative at volume. The available posts describe a UGC production engine that a team can use to create at least 160 UGC ads per shoot day, with multiple hooks, bodies and calls to action per ad, so a brand can test each element and find its winning creative style within two to three months. Speidel argues the old method of throwing content at the wall is about 70% guesswork and that creator quality is a 50/50 hit or miss, and lists the failures brands hit with small UGC creators: inconsistent quality, missed deadlines, creators who do not understand the product, and content that looks good but does not convert. The second post sets out what an agency should provide instead — scroll-stopping hooks, content aligned with buying intent, high-quality creatives at scale, consistency across campaigns, and data-driven month-on-month improvement. For an L&D session aimed at making a marketing team's creative testing system more reliable, that is closer to the operational problem than a general creativity keynote.
- Jesper Lehrmann: Choose Jesper Lehrmann over Bob Sager when the managers are product managers in a scaling SaaS business and the capability gap is operating discipline rather than idea generation. The available posts give five reflections from someone who has grown companies: processes are communication vehicles and should be simple; waterfall accumulates risk while agile mitigates it; separate the decision from the implementation; say no much more than yes; and communicate strategy always. Lehrmann frames these as daily practice for product management during scale-up, after noting that four out of five scale-ups become mediocre. A second post recommends Atomic Habits and Extreme Ownership for reflection, positioning reading as a way to get new ideas and advice for life and work. For a product organisation trying to improve how it makes and communicates decisions while growing, that is a more targeted discussion than a creative-thinking workshop, and the reading list gives managers a low-cost follow-up resource.

---
AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/