In 1981 the quality expert Philip Crosby wrote: “When teaching Quality Management, I always teach my students to learn an ‘elevator speech.'” He meant a short speech for the boss, ready for the length of an elevator ride. It is the earliest dated use in the researcher Barry Popik’s collection of citations.
By 1997 the business writer Tom Peters used the form “elevator pitch.” He wrote that it “isn’t really about dealing with pressure. It’s about communication. And caring.” Other origin stories, about Hollywood screenwriters and an editor at Vanity Fair in the 1990s, offer no earlier date.