Folklore suggests that when Fred Smith, the legendary founder of FedEx, proposed
a reliable overnight delivery service in a computer information age in a paper at
Yale’s management School, he got a ‘C’ grade. The professor wrote: ‘‘The concept
is interesting and well-formed but in order to get better than ‘C’ the idea must be
feasible…’’ The paper became the idea for FedEx (for years, the sample package
displayed in the company’s print advertisements featured a return address at Yale
University).