Innovation by SIT

Many classic, successful products have been invented “by accident” – by an unintended mishap that just happened to turn out to be a brilliant stroke of R&D genius: Penicillin, the microwave, chocolate chip cookies and more. And the stories behind these incidents are always so fun and surprising that they catch our attention and stick in our minds for good.

Here are just a few of the classics. You have no doubt heard them, or similar versions of them, numerous times.

Ivory Soap

In 1878, in a Procter & Gamble soap production factory, one of the employee’s lunch breaks took longer than expected. The whole thing would have gone unnoticed, if not for a malfunction that got out of hand. One of the soap-mixers had kept on spinning all through the long lunch break. The result became evident a few days later: the soap bars emerging from the production line were peppered with tiny air bubbles and they were lighter than usual. The perplexed P&G executives, in what can only be described as a bold… gamble, decided to market the soap as is, hoping the consumers would not notice the difference.

A gamble they took, indeed. A few days later, letters started piling up in the customer service department. Surprisingly enough, the consumers did not use the letters to express their dismay over the faulty soap, but rather to express their satisfaction with P&G’s new remarkable soap invention.

P&G’s executives were flabbergasted: Could they have inadvertently invented a new product? The consumers commended P&G for the new clever soap that did not sink in the tub, was easy to use and lasted longer.

The commercial success of Ivory soap continues even today and it is available on shelves around the world.

Potato chips/crisps
In the summer of 1853, George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, where French-fried potatoes were a favorite on the menu.

One evening, a particularly fussy diner, railway magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, repeatedly refused to eat the fries he had been served with his meal, complaining that they were too thick and too soggy. After he had sent back several plates of increasingly thinly-cut fries, Crum decided to serve the guest fried wafer-thin slices of potato in grease, hoping to annoy the extremely fussy customer.

The plan backfired. The guest initially protested that the chef’s latest efforts were too thin to be picked up with a fork, but upon trying a few, the chips were an instant hit. In fact, other guests began asking for them as well, and soon Crum’s “Saratoga Chips” became one of lodge’s most popular treats, before later being sold all over the world.

Yet again, this success was not planned. Never in his right mind did Crum believe that these greasy slices were something people would actually pay for! And, had he asked his customers what new and interesting concoction he should whip up, this certainly wouldn’t have been one of their answers!

Post-It Notes

The story begins in 1968 with the inadvertent discovery by 3M research scientist, Dr. Spence Silver, of a highly unusual new adhesive that did not stick very strongly when coated onto tape backings. In 1973, Art Fry, a fellow 3M employee, applied some of his colleague’s low tack adhesive to some scrap paper and began using these as bookmarks for his church choir hymnal. Since then, the Post-it® Note concept has become one of 3M’s best selling product lines.

Interesting how such a popular innovation among consumers was, in fact, the product of a failed attempt at something else whose value was only discovered five years later.

But is there another moral to this tale?

In addition to the understandable drive to find solutions to problems, there may be a benefit to looking at what you hold in your hand and searching for the problems that it could potentially solve.

No question about it! These stories are wonderful – and may we all be so lucky to have our next accident make us our next million…

But, the real question still remains: Should we wait for good fortune to bring about a lucky accident that will awaken a latent need we were not previously aware of? Is that how we should plan our new product development pipeline?

Or is it possible to generate an imaginary malfunction and explore its potential consequences and benefits?

By using a structured procedure, called Function Follows Form, which works by (virtually) manipulating an existing product to create mutations similar to those created in accidents, we can produce a variety of interesting new forms. Then, through a series of filters (marketing and implementation) we can determine which of these forms could have real market value.

So, whoever said “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

Go ahead, break it – ruin it – let it get moldy – fill it with air – fry it in grease! You never know where you may end up – but it is surely worth a shot!

Shiri and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

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