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| Plastic Hanging Baskets |
Innovation is intriguing.
How does it happen?
The history of innovations is well told by Matt Ridley in "How Innovation Works". He has fascinating stories of
how new inventions came into being and increased our standard of living.
He argues that even the light bulb was
not a lightning bolt of inspiration.
Edison built on all previous knowledge and then trialed and error-ed
through 6,000 types of filaments until one worked.
Ridley builds the case that innovative
ideas are most likely a rearrangement of previous good ideas. Sometimes ideas were ahead of the technology of machines or materials.
Hanging baskets was such a simple
idea. Why didn’t we think to do this
before?
Take a pot of flowers and put a
hanger on it so it could be hung on your porch.
That word from the movie ‘The Graduate’
was right ---- “Plastics”. The
development of plastic pots with flexible hangers saved Spring flower growers
by giving them a new income stream.
Ubiquitous plastic containers
replaced all those terra-cotta clay pots and associated broken backs lugging
them around.
So, with all these hanging baskets, how
can a new size be considered an innovation?
When I saw the little basket at
Strange’s Garden Center in Richmond, I knew that this is what I’ve been looking
for.
Existing hanging baskets for
houseplants are too big and too heavy.
Through some detective work, I found
that I could import this 10 cm basket from Holland by way of Canada.
This 4” basket will replace our 4.5”
and give indoor gardeners that ‘wittle’ hanging houseplant that they didn’t
know they wanted.
That’s how innovation works.
