The origin of the phrase is like something out of Lewis Sinclair's Babbitt. In 1911 on a rainy morning, TJ Watson met with the advertising and sales teams at t

The origin of the phrase is like something out of Lewis Sinclair's Babbitt. In 1911 on a rainy morning, TJ Watson met with the advertising and sales teams at the National Cash Register Corporation (pre-IBM). Frustrated by the lack of new submissions Watson went into a tirade: The trouble with every one of us is that we don't THINK enough. We don't get paid for working with our feet - we get paid for working with our heads. Feet can never compete with brains. Thought has been the father of every advance since time began. Knowledge is the result of thought, and thought is the keynote of success in this business, or in any business. Any man on the selling force today could make two dollars where he now makes one, if he would but THINK along the right lines. It is our job to help the man in the field think right. It is our job to place make them think about what a Cash Register will do for them. 'I didn't think', has cost the world millions of dollars. Mr. Olwell, I wish you would have a big placard made with that word Think on it in bold letters, and have it on the wall of this department tomorrow morning. I suggest also that we adopt the word Think as a motto or slogan, keeping it before us at all times in as many different ways as we can. THINK is the original ABC. Think Alec Baldwin spittling on a bunch of sales guys not meeting their numbers in Glengarry Glen Ross and you've got it. It's not some lofty command to invent the future. It's an order to close more sales. A year later, Watson was convicted of anti-competitive sales tactics and sentenced to a year in prison. Two years after that he was fired from the National Cash Register Corporation and went to join IBM.