This evening, I fed my dog. He is a Weimaraner, named Kaiser, and is extremely energetic and fun. He packs away about 5 cups of kibble a day and that is why my wife and I purchase the big dog, 40lb bag of dog food. While I am working on filling his bowl with food and topping his water dish off I expect him to lay down for me on the kitchen floor, and wait quietly. This is something I learned from Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer. You must always keep your dog in a submissive, quiet state, especially around feeding time. Often times a dog gets really excited when they are about to get fed, and by feeding them without settling them down, you are in fact strongly rewarding their behavior. This isn’t a post about dog psychology though, its about innovation. I want to bring your attention to the bag!
Weimaraners are the types of dogs that are prone to bloat. Having corn and wheat products in the dog food they eat can contribute to bloatedness. In order to keep him healthy we purchase Canidae dog food. It has a very high protein content, is all natural, and is fit for human consumption. I haven’t tried it yet but might if this economy hits us even harder. Up until this point though, our 40lb bag would sit in the closet, and we’d have to roll it shut after every feeding. In some cases, this led to a big mess because typically the opening will start deteriorating and long tears will stream down the sides leaking kibble.
But now the bag has velcro! There is a flap perforated at one side of the bag. When the bag arrives at its resting place you simply pull up on this flap, and it reseals itself with a velcro strip when you’re done feeding. Its genius. I am very delighted with the flap! How easy is it then to delight a customer with innovative ideas!
What is innovation?
The transistor radio was invented by Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker.[1] However, the radio was not popularized by any company until Sony released their personal version in 1957.[1] For this reason, many people think that it was Sony that invented the radio, but this is not true. Sony took the radio and doused it with innovation, and remolded into a product that took off. Up until Sony’s enter into the market, the transistor radio was viewed as something a family only had one of. Partly this was because it was expensive, some $350 when considering inflation to todays standards. Therefore, a family viewed it as something they would gather around and listen to. It was a group activity.
When Sony introduced the personal radio prices had dropped considerably. The old radios used expensive, large vacuum tubes as the amplifier elements while Sony used small transistors. It marketed their radio by saying, “Why listen to what everyone else wants to listen to. With our radio you can listen to whatever you want”! It was a huge hit and Sony took off around the product.
I often thought that innovation was in fact invention but that is not the case. Innovation is taking something that we’re already doing and doing it in a different way. Its solving a problem nobody knows we have. Once something is innovated, people often will stand around and say to themselves, “WOW, that makes so much sense”!
Dictionary.com’s definition of Innovation is this:
- The act of introducing something new.
- Something newly introduced.
W. Edwards Deming has this to say about Innovation:
“Innovation comes from the producer — not from the customer.”
“Nobody ever asked for the lightbulb.”
What is meant by these words is that a company cannot depend on its annual questionaires for future product enhancements. The customers will only tell you what you already want to know. Take the lightbulb for instance. At the time people were using lanterns for light sources. A questionaire might reveal that customers want a longer running lantern, something less bulky and more portable, etc. “Nobody ever asked for the lightbulb”. Although the lightbulb, solves all the requests of the customers, and also solves problems they never thought they had nobody actually would ever have thought to ask for it from Edison.
When you think about innovation, think about this: what does it solve that I never thought was a problem before. Cell phones are certainly an innovative product, at least in their early stages. They solved the problem of missing calls because you weren’t by the home phone. They solved the problem of being stranded on the roadside with a broken down car. They solved many problems, that we never thought we had! At the time, we just assumed the answering machine was good enough to catch our calls, and we’d get back to people whenever we got home. If we were stranded on the side of the road, we’d just wait for a police man or friendly person to take us to the nearest gas station to phone for help. It was an accepted practice, that now looks almost crazy and foreign!
The dog food bag helps me solve the problem of always having to wrinkle up the bag after feeding, slowly wearing it down and eventually seeing splits down the sides as it wears. Now I can flip the lip, and velcro it back down when I’m done. Innovation.
1.) Innovation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation, Viewed 04/30/09
