Bonus 22. The Telegraph
The telegraph actually had a long process of improvements, one could argue with the beginning of smoke signals and reflected light, through electrical telegraphs like that used to tap out and send Morse code, and continuing on through wireless telegraphy.
As with most such “top lists,” there’s subjectivity. Your own list will not be exactly like mine. Actually, my own list might change the next time I give it a look. Even luminaries disagree.
In 2013, The Atlantic surveyed a dozen incredibly smart leaders within technology, science, and engineering and asked them to list the inventions that had the greatest impact on civilization. The editors compiled and weighted the lists submitted by everyone, and then published “The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel.”26 I didn’t see the individual lists, but I do know this. If they were seven years old and getting their tonsils out, they’d put anesthesia (very) near the top.
Moving the Bullseye
The Wizard of Oz: As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
The Tin Man: But, I... I still want one.
People were dying from their bad hearts. So doctors used a device to help save their lives. But, there were problems with the device, and improvements needed to be made. Maybe the solution to making the device better will be immediately apparent to you. Like most things, the answer is simple once you see it. Though honestly, even if I hadn’t been shown the simple solution, I’m not sure that it would have been apparent to me.
Throughout my career, I’ve been lucky to work with some really smart people. The two key people related to this innovation were John Lucas and Robert Schock. Bob has a doctoral degree in engineering, and I call him “the professor.” It just seems to fit. There were other people involved, of course, but these two wizards led the effort.
There were a lot of limitations, physical restrictions, on what could be done. As it turned out, the problem was solved by thinking about it from an entirely new perspective. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me give you a little background and show you an illustration. Then you can solve the problem, perhaps just by thinking about it, or maybe scribbling a bit on a napkin. In any event, you won’t need a calculator or even math.
As mentioned at the outset, people were dying. In fact, every year, thousands and thousands of people went to hospitals with a weak or damaged heart. These weak hearts weren’t able to pump sufficient amounts of blood through the bodies of these folks. Not good.
To help these troubled hearts, doctors sometimes insert an intra-aortic balloon (IAB) to help the heart pump blood through the body. An IAB is actually simple to describe. Think of it like a tube (called a catheter) that’s about a meter in length (and about twice the diameter of an iPhone charging cord). At the front end, there’s a hot dog-size balloon. If you looked at a cross section of the catheter, you’d see it’s actually a tube inside another tube. The inside tube is used to insert a metal wire that guides the catheter up through the artery to the aorta. The thin space between the two tubes is where gas is pumped back and forth to inflate and deflate the balloon.
Cross Section of a Typical Intra-Aortic Balloon Catheter
The way it’s used can be explained simply too. I purposely say, “explained simply,” because reading and doing are two different things—especially when it comes to inserting something near the heart! But basically, the catheter is inserted into the patient through the femoral artery located in the groin area, and the length of the catheter is then snaked up through the femoral artery until the end with the hot dog-size balloon is inside the patient’s aorta. The back end that’s outside the patient is then hooked up to a pump that’s about the size of a microwave oven, which inflates and deflates the hot dog-size balloon.
By inflating and deflating the balloon in the aorta, and syncing the inflation and deflation to a patient’s beating heart, the blood flow through the body is significantly improved. In fact, it can be a lifesaver. Sometimes IABs remain in a patient for days or weeks, while waiting for the patient’s heart to get stronger.
Here were the challenges. When a catheter is inserted into an artery, it also obstructs the blood flow through that artery. That’s not good, especially if the person already has a weak or damaged heart. So there was the goal of decreasing the diameter of the catheter. There was also the challenge to increase the area for the gas to shuttle back and forth (that thin area between the inside tube and the outside tube). More area for the gas flow would allow the balloon to inflate/deflate faster, and that would improve pumping more blood.
So those were two necessary goals.
Reduce the outside diameter of the catheter (so the artery is less obstructed).
Increase the area between the two catheters (to allow more gas flow).
Easy, right?
Hold on, there were also a few major limitations at the time, basically due to the existing material science. These also need to be the ground rules for your thinking.
The inner catheter had to remain round and the same size (because the guide wire was already as small as possible.
The wall thicknesses of the two tubes couldn’t be made any thinner.
The large catheter had to remain round.
So with those goals and limitations in mind—you can go ahead and think about how best to solve the problem.
Before I show you the answer, let me make a few suggestions that might be helpful when approaching a problem where a solution is not obvious.
Start with blank paper.
Sometimes it helps to consider the problem without being overly fixated on the existing design. Existing designs often end up hitting a wall due to inherent limitations, and a new approach needs to be considered. Two blades on a razor might be better than one, but at some point, adding more blades doesn’t help. A propeller can only move a plane so fast, so a jet engine had to be invented to go faster.
This is the “blank paper” thinking that resulted in the world’s largest taxi company owning no vehicles (Uber), and the world’s largest accommodation provider owning no real estate (Airbnb).
Break the problem into its simplest definition.
It’s a good idea to describe the problem (or need) simply. And don’t include what you presume to know are the associated problems with a particular solution.
It’s like when the team at Apple worked for weeks to prepare a presentation to show Steve Jobs, which included many pages of prototype screenshots showing the new program’s functions as to how the app would work. According to Mike Evangelist, who was on the team responsible for coming up with ideas for a DVD-burning program, “Then Steve comes in [to the meeting]. He doesn’t look at any of our work. He picks up a marker and goes over to the whiteboard. He draws a rectangle. ‘Here’s the new application,’ he says. ‘It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says BURN. That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.’”27
Ask for Ideas
The reason we’ve all heard that “ideas can come from anywhere” is because it’s true. Ask for ideas.
Involve an Outsider
I was thinking of titling this point as “Be an Outsider,” and that’s a good mindset to apply sometimes. Though it can be difficult to forget what you know. It’s easier to involve others with a unique perspective. That’s an advantage people have from other industries. It’s why Nike has no issues hiring people outside of the shoe and apparel industry. Innovators bring what they’ve learned from across the continuum of their experiences and apply it to the situation at hand.
Before I show you how John Lucas and the professor cleverly solved the problem—and assuming you haven’t figured it out yet—go ahead and review the two goals (and the restrictions). What would you do?
Now, back to John Lucas and the professor. I will tell you this. John Lucas and the pr
ofessor cleverly reduced the overall diameter, thereby providing less obstruction in the artery, and simultaneously increased the area for the gas flow, thereby providing greater volume for the balloon to inflate/deflate more efficiently. The new design went on to generate over $1 billion in sales. More important, their work benefitted many patients. It was a pleasure to have these guys as colleagues.
All right, I’ll show you how John Lucas and the professor solved the problem.
In the figure, the original design is shown on the left; the new design is shown on the right. The breakthrough was realizing they could essentially combine the two catheters—and actually share a common wall. Simple. Clever. Ingenious. It was as though they shifted the bullseye. (I gave a little hint in the title of this chapter.)
Note, the illustrations are representational only—in reality, the outer diameter of the new design was smaller than the outer diameter of the old design, so it provided less obstruction to blood flow in the artery. At the same time, the area available to shuttle gas back and forth was increased, which allowed the balloon to inflate/deflate faster, increasing blood pumping efficiency.
Cross Section of a Traditional Coaxial Design on Left,
and the New Dual Lumen Design on Right
Their clever work produced a win-win, which resulted in countless dub-dubs. The tin man would be proud.
Turnaround Test
A friend of mine swears this is a true story, and I believe him. It happened to him and his wife. After finally getting their van loaded with suitcases, a tent, and a cooler for the family vacation, they gave a final call for their three kids to pile in. The highway was beckoning. The family road trip was about to begin!
Within just a few minutes, and after traveling barely a mile down the road, they realized they’d left one of their kids at home. They immediately turned around to get the stranded boy. He was safe and sound, watching television in the room where they’d last seen him, oblivious to missing the departure.
That’s an example of passing the turnaround test. I’ve never had to go back and pick up a forgotten child, but at one time or another, I have left behind numerous things that necessitated my turning around.
The turnaround test is actually a good qualitative indicator for how much your product is needed and loved by your customers. When they realize it’s been left behind, do they love it enough to do an about-face? Or do they think, “No biggie, I can do without.”
Does your product pass the turnaround test? Passing can be accomplished for a couple of different reasons. For one, it may be absolutely necessary. A good example would be your wallet or passport. If you’re traveling internationally, it’s not an option to leave your passport at home.
The other reason for passing the turnaround test, and the one relevant for product developers and marketers, is because the product “feels” absolutely necessary to the owner. It provides so much utility, convenience, and outright enchantment that it’s worthwhile making a U-turn. You just don’t want to be without it. Products that pass the turnaround test are those that have the best chance of wildly succeeding. They’re the products that give more than they get. Those you tell your friends about.
Passing the turnaround test is not magic, though it is elusive. And, if you rely on dumb luck to achieve it, you won’t. Instead, if you want a chance of your product or service reaching that rarified level, you’ll need to plan for it through design and forethought.
Everything matters, and that combination of factors includes the following.
Quality. We know quality when we see it reflected in the craftsmanship, the design, and the usage. Management expert Peter Drucker said it well. “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. That is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”28
Functionality. Does your product or service let customers do things they couldn’t do before? Does it provide new capability? Does it give them what seems like superpowers?
Ease of use. Simplicity is necessary for mass adoption. Think “point-and-shoot” cameras. Is your product or service incredibly easy to use? Could an elderly relative use it?
Value. There’s a saying in project management, “You can mostly do anything; it’s just a question of spending time and money.” To pass the turnaround test, your product typically has to do the opposite. It has to clearly save time and money.
Utility. The dictionary defines utility as “the state of being useful or beneficial.” It’s a combination of the above and more. Like a machete in a jungle, or a Wet Ones wipe for cleaning ice cream from a little face, your offering needs to be simply useful.
Beauty. For a product to be loved, it should be aesthetically pleasing. People are drawn to beauty, and there’s not enough of it in the world. Jony Ive, chief designer at Apple, said, “I think we are surrounded by hundreds and thousands of products that show companies don’t care enough about what they design for consumers.”29
If you work ruthlessly to create a product that passes the turnaround test, you have at least a chance of making a product that people truly want and happily use—even if they have to go back to get it.
The Woman Whose Magic Is
Five Times Stronger Than Steel
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
—Arthur C. Clarke
Every kid in the fifth grade class saw the magic happen. Their teacher had invited a guest visitor to the classroom that day. The guest was an elderly woman, and she captivated the student’s attention like a virtuous sorceress holding court.
Her name was Ms. Kwolek, and it was apparent to the students when she entered the room, that she was wise and kind. Ms. Kwolek began by sharing memories from her childhood, many years in the past, when she herself was the age of the students. Ms. Kwolek spoke of her interest in nature and exploring outdoors. She spoke of being curious. And while she was talking, Ms. Kwolek had beside her a glass beaker containing a mysterious liquid.
The kids listened intently and leaned forward to get a closer look at the magic that was about to happen. Picking up a glass rod that was about the size of a pencil, and using it like a magic wand, Ms. Kwolek carefully extended it into the beaker and gently touched the surface of the liquid. Then, she slowly lifted the rod from the liquid’s surface. And … a long continuous rope began to emerge from the liquid.
It looked like magic. And it didn’t happen in a flash or with puff of smoke. The transformation from a liquid into a rope took place in a more astounding manner. It happened s l o w l y. And, inch-by-inch, the rope emerged from the liquid under the observant gaze of the students. The growing length of rope was slowly wrapped around a spool. Ms. Kwolek was like a sorceress, leisurely pulling one rabbit after another from a glass container. The grade schoolers were wide-eyed at the magic. And rightly so.
The feat Ms. Kwolek demonstrated that day has saved thousands of lives; it’s used in thousands of products and in dozens of industries. The rope she created from the liquid is used in automobiles, ships, consumer products, building material, tires, bridge reinforcement, armored vehicles, and even in spaceflight.
Born in 1923, Stephanie Kwolek was raised outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up with a genuine love of nature that she attributed to her father, who was a naturalist. She also had a strong interest in fashion and fabric design, which she credited to her mother.
With the intent of becoming a doctor, Stephanie completed her bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College in 1946. Needing to earn money before she was able to continue with her medical degree, Kwolek made the pragmatic decision to get a job in the chemical industry for a couple of years.
At the time, the country was fighting World War II, and there was a resulting sh
ortage of men at DuPont. The company needed talented resources, so Kwolek was interviewed by William Hale Charch, a DuPont researcher, who was duly impressed. Charch explained that the hiring process typically took a couple of weeks before an offer would be formalized.
Believing DuPont to be a place where she could make a contribution, Kwolek politely informed Charch that if he wanted to hire her, DuPont should be prompt, because she was considering another offer. Charch typed up the job offer while she waited. It was a good move for all concerned. Kwolek found the research and applied chemistry work at DuPont to be of great interest, and she decided not to pursue a career as a physician.
After several years, and with the anticipated looming shortage of gasoline due to the war, Kwolek was tasked with exploring new formulations to increase material strength, as the company was looking for a material that could be used in tires. Working in the lab one day, Kwolek produced a batch of liquid polymer that appeared cloudy and not viscous. She later remarked that the polymer was cloudy, like the color of buttermilk, and unlike normal polymer formulations that were clear. For that reason, it appeared to have not formulated properly. Normally, the bad mix would have just been tossed into the trash. But, for whatever reason, Kwolek decided to run some tests of this strangely colored solution on a spinneret machine.
However, the technician operating the test machine had a strong hunch that this opaque concoction would likely clog the machine, resulting in a major cleanup mess. So, initially, he argued against doing the tests. But Kwolek persisted, and the tests were run.
The test results were stunning. The material showed dramatically increased tensile strength. The potential for this material was immediately apparent to Kwolek and to DuPont management. DuPont promptly assigned a team to explore applications. Kwolek continued her experimenting and went on to discover that the material could be made even stronger by subjecting it to additional heat treatment. In fact, this material was five times stronger than steel.
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