The Mother of Reinvention

Some of the most successful products in history, from the Ford Model T to the iPod, were not inventions. Why being best to market, rather than first, is the true predictor of success.

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In The Republic, Plato famously wrote, "Necessity is the mother of invention." What the esteemed Greek philosopher failed to mention is that reinvention is the way to build the mother of all companies.

Innovation is the current buzzword, but in many ways, it's become an overused term that means all things to all people. Anything can be "innovative," regardless if it's more of the same, or a revolutionary product that doesn't make things better. (Did the Segway really change your life?) A reinvention, however, is specific: It involves taking something that already exists, improving it, and making it the industry standard. A reinvention has the added benefit that somebody else has already done some of the legwork of getting established in the marketplace.

"When somebody invents something, it usually means there's a high level of consumer education," says Eric Ryan, co-founder of San Francisco-based Method, a company specializing in green cleaning products with sleek designs. "The most successful things find a new way to differentiate on top of a set of established behaviors. We didn't invent home cleaning, we just found a new way to do it."

It may sound less sexy than "invention" and less futuristic than "innovation," but throughout the history of American business, reinvention has been the backbone of entrepreneurial success.

Henry Ford is one of the first titans who, in essence, reinvented the wheel. He was far from the first auto manufacturer to develop a four-wheeled gas-powered car. That would be Gottlieb Daimler in 1886, 17 years before the Ford Motor Company was incorporated. Ford, however, pioneered features such as lightweight vanadium steel, removable cylinder heads, a suspension designed to handle America's rural roads and a one-piece underside shell in his easy-to-maintain-or-modify Model T.

More importantly, Ford reinvented Oldsmobile's rudimentary assembly line. "He was the first to bring the work to the workers, making this a real assembly line and one that remains the standard," says Russ Banham, author of The Ford Century. "Previous manufacturing methods, in which workers moved from one part of the factory to another building a car, took so much time the finished automobile was unaffordable for average Americans." By adding a movable conveyor belt to the assembly line, Ford cut down production time from more than 12 hours to 93 minutes. Between 1913 and 1927, the company would produce some 15 million Model Ts, changing the automotive and economic landscape forever.

The 21st century version is perhaps best exemplified by the iPod. Although the digital music player is now nearly as ubiquitous as a toaster in the kitchen, the device only made its debut in November 2001, a few years after mp3 players like the Rio PMP-300 hit the market. And while the original scroll-wheel iPod was powerful, offering 5 GB of storage that could hold 1,000 songs, it was also expensive, at $400. The iPod proved so popular that even at that price, many users quit (or at least slowed) their illegal downloading by switching to the more streamlined and user-friendly iTunes.

"It seems to me that the true visionaries are the ones who look at the same equation that everyone else is looking at and still come out with something that changes the game," says Robert B. Tucker, President of The Innovation Resource and author of Driving Growth Through Innovation. "In the case of Apple, they saw the growth of mp3 along with the problem of illegal downloads, so they came out with iTunes, a system that offers a complete solution to the customer."

Apple had the same impact on the marketplace as Ford, selling more than 210 million million iPods worldwide. As of June 2008, 5 billion songs have been downloaded from iTunes, which has also become the dominant player in digital TV and movie downloads. Apple is constantly reinventing its successes. "The iPhone is nothing more than a product extension of the iPod," says Ryan. "It's a major breakthrough in the way phones are set up, but before it came out, any of us who has a Mac or an iPod knew how it worked." Available for less than two years, total sales of the iPhone (and iPod touch) have hit 37 million.

Not all reinventions have to be technological advances, however. Some are variations that change the market for reasons beyond the product itself. Take Grey Goose vodka, which was created and introduced by Sidney Frank in 1997. Grey Goose upset the vodka shelf by making it the "it" drink of the young and beautiful. To give it cache, Frank created the premium spirit with a French distiller and packaged it in a lustrous bottle with a "Tricouleur" graphic and sold for $30.

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