“I would pretend I was silicone, and if I was injected into a mold, what I would do.”
– H.J. Heinz engineer, Paul Brown, inventor of the silicon seal for upside-down-ketchup bottles, from Brian Grazer’s, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life
Yesterday we looked at whether we were using our curiosity in a workmanlike manner — as a tool or technique. Today, we see that concept in practical application. Grazer goes on to say, “Heinz was so determined to understand its customers, it followed them home from the grocery store.” Upon seeing people desperately trying to shake, pound or cajole the last of the ketchup out of the old, glass, upright bottle, “engineer Paul Brown was so determined to solve a problem, he imagined himself as liquid silicone.”
Being “so determined” isn’t difficult for most of us. Channeling that determination, though, with curiosity as a technique or tool — that’s where we come up with better ideas. In a WSJ feature from Saturday, a New Jersey school superintendent (David Aderhold) says, “I cannot help but think that we may be failing our students by reinforcing an educational system that perpetuates grades at the expense of deep and meaningful learning.” I bet he’s referring to the kind of learning Paul Brown saw in kitchens, with people, faces almost as red as the ketchup they were trying to shake out of the bottle, and to the kind that led him to solve the problem in a new, innovative way. I also bet Heinz reduced the amount of ketchup wasted (and thus sold…) pretty dramatically. On the other hand, they increased their market share exponentially more than that loss — all because Paul Brown imagined what he’d do if he were liquid silicone, injected into a mold.
Now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go imagine myself as a self-correcting computer chip in the head of my 6-iron in an effort to reverse the horrifying hook I’ve developed…
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