The downside of the 30 second elevator pitch

I've heard a lot of advice about the need to prefect one's elevator pitch: make it WOW, make it short (30 to 60 seconds), give people a reason to care (have an emotional punch), etc. All of that is great and wonderful advice, and for most business ideas that is all you need. Unfortunately there is a downside, that only works with ideas people are already basically familiar with or with "simple" ideas. Simple in quotations because no business is simple, but some ideas are more complex than others. A long-term vision can be very complicated (3M is a great example of this: today we know them for Post-it notes, sandpaper and tape, but they started out as a mining company that realized they had to move into R&D to survive). Often, but not always, complex ideas can be teased apart into simpler but still useful ideas. The 30 second pitch is good for forcing people to do that teasing apart. Complex ideas are not inherently bad, convoluted ones are.

Enough about simple vs complex ideas. To understand why 30-60 second elevator pitches are only good for fairly familiar ideas one needs to understand the 3 types of new products/business approaches:

1) products/business based on efficiency improvements or lower costs.

It is very easy to pitch these; just point and say "I'm going to do that better and cheaper than anyone else."  These are also probably the easiest to find funding for as the business sector is well defined, but have the highest risk of being edged out or copied by competition.

2) products/business based on combining familiar things in new ways to create a entirely new category of product (for example, iPhone = cellphone + computer).

These are a bit harder to pitch quickly but do able following this basic template: "You know product A and product B. If we combine their best features we get a great new product and here is why." Here there is a huge potential for success or failure. If they work, they will be copied, but that is not actually a bad thing as it will push the business towards continuous improvements. This type of business is great for traditional investors.

By the way pharmaceuticals fall into this category: everyone is familiar with illnesses and medications, even though most don't understand the technical details.  

3) products/business based on "revolutionary ideas." Revolutionary ideas, in this context, means that the typical investor/general public is not familiar with the basis of the idea, also the idea has far reaching applications and is probably very disruptive.

A fast test for a revolutionary idea is simple: a series of concise and simple statements can not adequately describe the idea in less than 60 seconds but can in under 5 minutes (beyond this the idea is either poorly formed or the speaker is fishing). Two examples of this: pitching the internet in 1985 and pitching mass distribution of electricity in 1875 (Edison invented the light bulb 1879). These types of businesses are best suited for crowdfunding, as they are likely to scare most other investors away as being too risky.

The functional purpose behind the 30 second elevator pitch

While there is truth to the claim that investors have many business ideas to consider and often don't have a lot of time to do it in, the functional purpose of elevator pitches is to quickly eliminate high risk ideas and poor salesmen. Unfortunately, that often means eliminating the ideas that might prove the greatest benefit for society. So I'll ask you the next time someone approaches you with an idea respect their courage (it takes guts to cold call or "ambush" a stranger to pitch an idea), and really listen for a few minutes (maybe they have a revolutionary idea or just not the best salesman - there's that proverb about "never judge a book by its cover.").

A note about my "test" for revolutionary ideas

The "test" is more of an observation than anything else and learned from trying my full pitch:

I have a way to make bleach more energy efficiently then the current best practice. One that does not produce chlorine gas which makes this method safe for anyone to use. That in turn means it can be used in the third world to disinfect drinking water and save over 1 million children a year from dying from water born illnesses. While bleach is cheap, shipping it isn't. With my method, a 50 pound bag of salt and a solar panel, it is possible to produce enough bleach at the point of use to disinfect drinking water, to US standards, for 150 people for a year.

Furthermore, a side product of the process is hydrogen; thus solar arrays, my catalyst and seawater lets one do desalination to get drinking water at a net energy harvest. Doing this is also more energy efficient than the electrolysis of water.

Back to "production at point of use;" such production reduces greenhouse gas emissions due to transporting bleach. It also means on does not have to transport either chlorine gas (AKA mustard gas) nor concentrated bleach, both of which are hazardous chemicals. Point of use production also means one does not have to store large quantities of concentrated bleach.

Electricity accounts for at least 50% of the production costs, which often makes it too expensive to produce bleach, or chlorine gas from which bleach can be made, anywhere but in the least expensive electricity markets. That in turn requires transporting either chlorine gas or concentrated bleach long distances to reach all markets. With my method, I estimate I could save the global bleach industry $250 million USD in electricity every year.

Oh yes, one last point: globally industrial bleach is a $1-2 billion USD market every year. At a minimum, this technology is worth $1-2 million in patent royalties.
----
The whole pitch can be done in under 5 minutes. I can pitch the first paragraph in less than 60 seconds. In fact, any one of those paragraphs can be spoken in less than 60 seconds, but none of them on their own has been sufficient to get investors. It was by thinking about the problems I've encountered with my whole pitch and then asking what other business ideas would have had similar problems if one was only allowed to make a 60 second pitch that I came to my conclusion about pitching revolutionary ideas.