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Hey! That Was My Idea!

By Peter Lloyd

Whenever I see an idea as simple as wheels on luggage, I wonder what took so long. Why didn’t someone invent this obvious convenience long ago? Looking into such a question always turns up a lesson or two about invention. Here are four.

The Mother of Invention
There was a time, of course when those of us who could afford to travel didn’t need wheels. We had porters. And they had trolleys for hauling lots of luggage. No need, no invention. But make us schlep our own bags descriptiondown long corridors, over ramps, up escalators, and into overhead compartments—one of us, driven by the Creative Juice named Sloth, is going to come up with a solution. Luggage on wheels came from someone condemned to lug his luggage every day.

The Father of the Rollaboard
In his Boca Raton garage back in 1988, Northwest pilot Robert Plath invented the Rollaboard, which looked much like the suitcases on wheels most of us pull today. His Rollaboard even included an extendable handle. Right before that, most of us strapped our bags onto metal frames with wheels. You could say the Rollaboard was begging to be invented.

Asleep at the Wheels
Big, successful luggage makers knew about the wheel, just as surely as Kodak knew about digital photography. Like Kodak, however, they knew too much about what was bringing them success. I refuse to conclude that a Samsonite new-product-development team failed to cobble wheels and bags together. I am willing to bet that an executive team tethered to ongoing success poo-pooed any number of wheeled-luggage concepts.

Then I found this in USA Today:
“We should have invented the rollerboard ourselves, but we didn’t,” says Tom Sandler, president of Samsonite, the world’s largest luggage company—and the largest maker and seller of rollerboards.
Looks like Plath also beat Samsonite to the better name, Rollaboard.

Ideas are Free
My most instructive lesson from my rolling luggage research casts light on the I-had-that-idea-first syndrome. On a delightful blog named Martha Stewardess, I found the post, Ever Wonder Who Invented Luggage With Attached Wheels? As informative as it was, I have to quote verbatim its one and only comment.
In 1971 I use to go to boarding school in South Africa Pietersburg and I used the train from Pretoria and on my holiday I designed a board and attached wheels to this board and strapped it to my heave bag full of clothes and I still remember clearly my father telling me one day while I was pulling my bag through the station and every body looking at me pulling my bag so fast past them you will see every body pushing bags around train stations and airports one day and today that’s what I see. I still think about it allot and know some one saw what I did and designed it. I know that this was my idea 40 years ago.
Coming up with the most creative idea takes you only half way to an invention, owning it, and the right to call it your idea. As I tried to dramatize in Thomas Edison Blues, the other half of invention—the equally if not more important half—is implementation.

See also:
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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