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. Continue reading ‘Lucky Engineering Accidents’
Last semester I assigned my class at university the following project: to develop “virtual products” around the concept of the gym. Applying some of SIT’s tools, my students came up with some very interesting ideas, including a room-less gym, where all the equipment was portable, and could be set up where needed, for instance, in an office or at the beach; a gym with themed rooms, where each theme is expressed visually and in music, based on the physical exercise involved; and a bus that had a gym built in it, instead of seats, and which serves both for transportation and as a fitness centre (so over worked employees can get some exercise on their daily commute).
