Every now and then, we all have these little breakthroughs on a new invention or product. We’ve all been there. In the moment it’s the greatest idea of its time. But after a few days that product loses its luster. Imagine how many more great products we’d have if the diminishment of excitement didn’t fad.
I had a small breakthrough similar to this one just a few days ago. The only difference was when it came to this one was that it wasn’t one product that got me excited. It was reapplying the concept of a successful product to other products. Furthermore, this small breakthrough hasn’t faded much or even at all since it first struck my cranium. Since the concept can be applied to so many different products, my brain keeps getting juice to create new products out of the ones I’m seeing using the same concept that made this specific product successful. So what product gave me this inspiration?
It was a snake-like outlet power strip. I’ve seen this product maybe a hundred times before that moment. However, I never thought of it in the way that I started to think about it. I started to understand what made that product successful. There wasn’t any tricky engineering or coding involved. It’s not necessarily a groundbreaking product. It is a very simple redesign of an existing product. The redesign isn’t very cumbersome either. It probably doesn’t cost much more to produce to be frank. But the concept that it screams when you look at it is as clear as day now.
This snake-like outlet power strip allows for something that a normal straight power strip doesn’t allow. It allows freedom of movement. It allows the snake power strip to reach tricky areas especially where room for cords and outlets are difficult to come by whether it’s under a desk or tv stand. How much of a difference does it truly make? I don’t know. To be honest, probably not as much as you think. However, the perceived value is much higher. And that’s what it’s all about.
Finding an existing product and enhancing it slightly to gain a competitive edge over the original product is the essence of entrepreneurship and innovation. It’s making something better than what already was out there.
The brain blast that I had about this snake power strip was that it took a normal straight-lined product and gave it the freedom of flexibility and accessibility. How many other products out there have used this concept? Well when you think about it, quite a few. A water hose provides more freedom of flexibility and accessibility over a pipe. A roller coaster provides freedom of movement over a traditional train. Pottery even allows clay artists the freedom to create all sorts of shapes rather than a box. The freedom of movement is all applied in these short examples and can be reapplied to practically anything.
What else can we utilize this concept with to make a current product better? This doesn’t stop here by the way. This is just one example of a successful concept like the snake like feature. The snowball effect that this brain blast started was that it gave me clarity to look at other concepts that make certain products successful. Then look at how I can take that concept and apply it to an entirely different product. This brain blast is different from the others that we all get weekly or even daily. Instead of a product, it’s a concept that can be applied to an infinite amount of products. What other successful concepts can be reapplied to other products to increase their perception.
Dabbl 