Just because it's a great idea...

It's kind of funny when you think about it.  "What's funny," you ask?

I'm talking about the origins of the well-known phrase: "the greatest thing since sliced bread."  Apparently, slicing bread was a watershed event.  That's why the first thing that inventor Otto Rohwedder did when he figured out how to do it was to get a patent.  And what happened next?  Did Otto make a lot of money with his amazing idea? No, apparently not. 

Why not? Well, listen to Seth Godin explain the situation. And after you listen to Seth's presentation you'll understand how this could happen. 

Comments

[ashley]

A colleague of mine once used that expression at a conference workshop in Barcelona. She was from Ohio, there was me and another New Orleanian there, a Brazilian, a Mexican, and everybody else was European.

They didn't quite get it.

[Scott]

Ernie, the "Pearls Before Breakfast" article from the Washington Post is fantastic!!! What a great study in sociology. It really makes me wonder how I would have reacted if it were in my building.

[Sophmom]

I'm sure I'm missing the forest for the trees but I don't get the connection. I read the WaPo piece last week and remember thinking, "That wouldn't happen in New Orleans. In New Orleans, folks would stop and listen."

As for sliced bread, well, hmmmm, our first patent on a new way to reach targeted customers issued in 1999. The hoopla started long before it issued. Well, I guess hoopla isn't the right word, more like seige. The third patent issued in 03, enabling us to (finally) make a honest company out of one giant corporation that had been making hay while the sun shone. By that time, we'd pretty much lost everything. I completely get the sliced bread video. The thing about invention is that by definition, it means someone was way ahead of their time and it takes a while for the world to catch on, for the ripples to spread, even in this electronic age. If my blog was more organized (like, had categories), I'd have a "patent" category. I do have one patent post that kind of puts it in a nutshell here.

[Tom O]

What I want to know is what was the greatest thing BEFORE sliced bread??