Jérôme Barthélemy : Why obvious innovations come so late: the example of the wheeled suitcase

In 1970, Bernard Sadow was working for a luggage company. He returned from a vacation in the Caribbean with an idea that would make him CEO of the company he worked for... On a stopover in Puerto Rico with his wife, children and two large suitcases, he saw an airport employee pushing a huge wheeled cart. He turns to his wife and says: "A suitcase with wheels. That's what we need. Two years later, Macy's department stores marketed the first rolling suitcase.

But the story doesn't end there. With its four wheels and strap, Bernard Sadow's suitcase wasn't very practical. It would be another fifteen years before someone thought of tilting it on its side and adding a telescopic handle. He was an airline pilot called Robert Platt ... who resigned to found the company that would make his fortune.

The boom in civil aviation dates back to the 1950s ... but it wasn't until 1972 that the wheeled suitcase was invented ... and 1987 that the wheeled suitcase became truly ergonomic. Why did luggage companies take so long? They can be blamed for not listening to their customers ... but that's not necessarily the problem. Before Bernard Sadow, no customer had ever complained that their suitcase didn't have wheels!

As the story of the rolling suitcase suggests, people don't always know what they (really) need. So there's no point asking them. You have to find out... and there's only one way to do that: put yourself in their shoes. Bernard Sadow would certainly never have come up with the idea of the wheeled suitcase if he hadn't been “in the shoes” of a customer during his stopover in Puerto Rico.

Above all, innovation is not always based on new technologies. Old (or even totally outdated) technologies often do the trick. In all likelihood, the wheel was invented in 3,500 BC.
 
Source : Miller, P., & Wedell-Wedellsborg, T. (2013), Innovation as usual, Harvard Business Review Press.

Quelle: Miller, P., & Wedell-Wedellsborg, T. (2013), Innovation as usual, Harvard Business Review Press.

Watch the interview with Jérôme Barthelemy by Jean-Philippe Denis Denis