Tom Kelley in The Art of Innovation tells the story behind Procter and Gamble’s fabulously successful Ivory soap:It began with a blunder; an ordinary worker who went to lunch and accidentally left a mixing machine running with a batch of soap inside. When he came back, the mix had been whipped to a froth, with soap so light it floated.
By chance, the new floating Ivory proved to be both convenient and popular, marketed by P & G as “99 and 44 one-hundredths percent pure.”
A factory worker stumbled onto a new way of mixing soap, but it was P & G’s marketing group that seized the opportunity to create one of the most successful packaged goods of the twentieth century.
Source: Tom Kelley, The Art of Innovation: Lessons and Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm (London: Profile Books, 2001), 150.
A review of this fine book can be seen at Reviewing Books and Movies.
Dr. Geoff Pound
Image: Ivory Soap: Born from an accident.
Related:
Tom Kelley on:
Get on your bike: Success Breeds Complacency
Snowboarding: Fear Doesn’t get you down the Mountain
Lou Holtz: The Best Leaders and Teammates
Innovation Begins with the Eye
Benjamin Zander: Getting the Best out of your Students
Tiger Woods and Team Effort
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