the innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.

  Vol. 6, No. 2, February 2006
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Mothers are the Inventors of Necessity
By Jeff Govendo

Quick! Name the #1 invention over the past 17 years for perhaps the largest identifiable consumer constituency in the U.S. The iPod? Nope. Camera cellphone? I don’t think so. Blackberry? Still a ways from 17 years on the market.

It’s the Boppy, a foam pillow with a shape that is more closed than a croissant but more open than a bagel, available in a wide variety of patterns and solids, in smooth or textured fabric. The Boppy, featured in a recent USA Today article, is the No. 1 baby product in the U.S., as voted by readers of American Baby magazine four years in a row. It is, among other things, used for propping up infants who are not yet capable of sitting upright by themselves, and thus widely used in day care centers as well as in the home. Notes American Baby editor Judy Nolte, the Boppy is “just the perfect pillow for just about everything.”

The Boppy was invented by erstwhile new mother Susan Brown of Golden, CO, who 17 years ago was asked to bring in some pillows to her daughter’s day care center so the child could see what was going on without being held by a staff member all the time. Ms. Brown labored intensively over the design – for a single evening – and it hasn’t changed in the 17 years since.

The article goes on to describe how Ms. Brown started the company (formerly known as Camp Kazoo, now the more sophisticated-sounding Boppy Co.) with some modest investments and key support from the non-profit Colorado Enterprise Fund, and grew it by remaining very focused on her core product and key customers. It is now a $25 million company (I know… chump change compared to iPod sales, but ... #1 four years in a row!) with 23 employees, distributing through retailers such as Babies R Us and Pottery Barn Kids.

Who is smart and creative enough to be a successful inventor? A nuclear scientist? A quantum mechanics engineer? An account executive in ad sales who also happens to be the mother of pre-toddler? Yes to all. (Ms. Brown was one of these; can you guess which?) The fact is, anyone willing to put their imagination to work can at least conceptualize a new solution to address a need, especially if they “just say maybe” to those ideas that seem a bit odd and take the time to explore the possibilities they hold.

Now, put a team of people together, each staying open-minded to the more unusual and unfamiliar-sounding (read: creative) notions that come up, building on each other’s good thinking, and the chances of developing a truly innovative solution increases exponentially. This is the power that every organization wishing to tap the creativity of its people has at its disposal.

For an article on how to make your organization more conducive to employees' creativity, read "6 Steps to Innovation".

As you will see, the first step is to design a physical space conducive to creative thinking and the free flow of ideas.

Perhaps with a Boppy for each person.

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Names We Like

We're always on the lookout for creative product or business names!.