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When Seth Berkowitz was a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, he started baking cookies for friends out of his dorm. Soon, he noticed a trend: students got hungry late at night and there wasn’t any delivery alternative to greasy and heavy food. Berkowitz wondered, “Why not hot cookies and milk – delivered to your door after midnight?”
When inventor Doug Vick got up in the middle of the night and bumped into the bedpost, he wondered, “How many other people do this every night?”
So he invented high-quality double-lined fleece slippers with a weight sensor in the sole, a light sensor on the side, and an LED light in the toe.
In the latest episode of the Why Didn’t I Think of That? ® Podcast, Bob Smith and Greg Anastos sit down with thinkofthat.net blogger Benjamin Christopher and discuss the first of their Axioms For Entrepreneurs, “Re-think Your Industry.”
The Why Guys explore how companies like Netflix, Apple, Xerox, and General Motors were able to look at their industries, and their companies, in a new light.
Richard James was working at a Philadelphia shipyard and was looking for a way to keep nautical instruments stable in rough seas. That’s when a torsion spring fell off the shelf. Richard watched the spring crawl down shelves, stacks of books and tabletops, and land upright on the floor. Suddenly, he had a great idea…
Why do candles all have such “girly smells,” 14-year-old Hart Main asked his younger sister, who was selling the candles for a school fundraiser. Main thought why not have smells that guys would like, like fresh cut grass, bacon, sawdust and leather. So, with a $100 investment, and his heart set on buying a brand new bike, this young man invented a whole new kind of candle: the ManCan.
What they do:
Pioneered the disposable ballpoint pen.
Inspiration:
When editor Laszlo Jozsef Biro noticed how quick newspaper ink dried, he wanted to give writers that same convenience. In 1938, he got his chemist brother to develop a thicker, more glutinous ink than fountain pens, while Laszlo invented and patented the ballpoint pen.
About the business:
In 1950, Biro sold his patents to French businessman Baron Marcel Bich who shifted the focus from refillable pens to disposable ones. Today the BIC Group is one of the largest manufacturers of low-cost disposable products, including pens, pencils, shavers and lighters.
It’s no secret that businesses and corporations are always looking forward. The next big product, the next big innovation, the next quarterly report. And yet, many businesses have histories as rich and fascinating as anything you’d find in a history book. Is there any money to be made in preserving your company’s legacy?
Sure, it only takes one company or product to revolutionize an industry, but selling people something they’ve never seen before isn’t easy. The general public tends to shy away from cutting edge technologies and trends, waiting for them to become more commonplace before adapting them. Your job is to change their minds. But how? Luckily, many before us have made bold, world-changing moves that have dramatically shifted the courses of industries, and made the people behind the companies filthy rich. One such example is Apple Computers.
Why would anyone just let people use their product… for free? Well, for Connecticut clockmaker Eli Terry, it was a matter of getting his product into the hands of people who might not have realized they wanted it.
It’s probably the most popular carbonated beverage in the world, but it wasn’t always an easy sell. Enter Asa Griggs Candler, the man who would take Coca-cola from drug-store remedy to a brand recognized around the world.
I was trying to decide which invention to cover in today’s blog post. Honestly, I was blanking.
So I started poking around the Why Didn’t I Think of That? site, and I ended up in the Inspiration Hall of Fame.
