Low-Tech Innovation
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steven Jobs: All of these names are synonymous with the advancement of modern technology. But technology alone never would have made these people success-ful. It was their uncanny knack for innovation that really led to their unprecedented success and icon status. Ben Franklin fa-mously harnessed the power of electricity, but it took more than a century before anyone found an innovative way to make a buck from it. I submit to you that these American icons should be re-membered as innovators, not technologists. When evaluating any technology, the prudent growth-oriented small business owner should have marketable innovation as his or her goal.
To me, no one better personifies innovation than a Chicago baker named Jimmy Dewar. In the fall of 1930, Dewar noticed that the stack of shortcake pans resting in a corner of his bakery was used only a couple of months a year. But on that day, Dewar didn’t see just a stack of pans. He saw an opportunity.
Dewar mixed together a pan full of sponge cake and sent it through the oven. He mixed up some crème and stuffed the cake with a core of the fresh filling. On a fall day in 1930, Jimmy Dewar took a pile of idle assets and created an American icon.
If you don’t think that’s innovative, ask one of the people who ate one of the half billion Twinkies produced last year.
To start thinking like a Jimmy Dewar, ask yourself the following questions:
· What are my current assets?
· How can I use them in new and better ways?
· Is there anywhere my existing assets can streamline my ex-isting processes?
· Is there a new technology that might allow me to leverage my existing assets?
Jimmy Dewar innovated with technology available to most any other baker at that time. There was nothing special about his particular oven or his brand of pastry gun. It was a new way of looking at his existing technology that led to this revolutionary new product.
When considering your existing assets, leave no stone un-turned because nothing is too sacred, too special, or too perfect that it can’t be improved on—even the Twinkie.
Just ask Chris Sell, a Brooklyn, New York, restaurateur who a few years back decided to batter-coat one of Dewar’s creations and deep fry it. His result: hour-long lines of people wanting to pay $3 a pop for a deep-fried Twinkie. Yes, terrible for our arteries, perhaps, but a great innovation for Mr. Sell.
So keep your eyes open. With a little ingenuity, innovation can be a piece of cake.
