Stealing a Page from Eli Whitney’s Playbook – Part 1 of a 2 Part Series

SCENE ONE

The Cotton Gin would be considered a simple invention in the context of today’s engineering knowledge and standards. Cotton balls were fed from the top of the machine. As the handle was rotated, cotton was drawn through the wire teeth that combed out the seeds. Hooks on the wooden drum enabled the cotton fibers to be pulled through a mesh. Then the cotton was pulled out of the wire teeth and out of the Gin, while the seeds that would not fit through the mesh fell outside. Until this invention, the process was laborious and resource intensive. Whitney often told the story behind his invention.  While observing the struggles of the growers, he contemplated an improved method for separating the seeds from cotton.  One day he observed a cat attempting to pull a chicken through a fence, but the cat was only able to pull through some of the feathers. This observation inspired Whitney in the design of the Cotton Gin machine.

The Cotton Gin turned out to be a game-changing innovation as it significantly improved the productivity of cotton farmers, and thus contributed to the development of the Southern states’ economy. As cotton became easier to clean, the cotton crop provided a major economic boost in the Southern states. In fact, it affected trade in rest of the world. The Northern states and England purchased more cotton and built more textile mills to process the cotton.

Lesson #1: Innovation is driven by “jobs to be done” or “unmet customer outcomes” in unoccupied market space. We employ products or solutions to get a job done. In the case of the Cotton Gin, the “job” growers wanted to get done was to clean the cotton balls. They wanted to separate the cotton fiber from the seeds.  This is the desired outcome, or the benefit the customer wanted to achieve. But they also wanted to get this job done with minimal harm and cost—the undesired outcome, or cost and harm. The ratio of desired outcomes to undesired outcomes in the present situation is called “Ideality.” When this ratio becomes infinity, it is called the “Ideal Final Result.” 

The further “Ideality” is from the “Ideal Final Result,” the more opportunity there is for innovation. This was the case with manually separating the seeds from the cotton fiber. The current solution had too many costs and harm. The ideal final result would be that the seeds separate themselves from the cotton fiber when we want them to with no cost or harm. Great innovators are adept at understanding low”Ideality” situations and seizing the opportunity for improvement. Whitney was very astute in understanding the “job to be done” in unoccupied market territory.

Lesson #2: The best ideas come from the most unlikely places.  What has “cat pulling chicken” got anything to do with separating cotton seeds from fibers? Innovators have an uncanny ability to connect the “unconnected.” Many innovation problems are solved through the use of analogy. Whitney was able to connect the “jobs to done” for the growers, and draw the analogy from “cat pulling chicken through fence” in order to create the Cotton Gin. Many growers were probably familiar with, or had seen the “cats pulling chicken” scenario. But Whitney was the first one to utilize it to advance the “Ideality” of “removing seeds from cotton” situation.

I am sure Sir Isaac Newton was not the first person to observe apples falling from a tree.  Alexander Fleming was probably not the first person to observe the mold spoiling the Petri dish, and Archimedes was probably not the first person to observe the water level rising in the tub while taking a bath. Successful exploration involves connecting the unconnected, and thinking analogously regarding problems and solutions.

Stay tuned for Lessons 3 & 4 coming soon……

The roots of Lean Thinking are often traced back to the 1700’s. It all started with Eli Whitney and his invention of the Cotton Gin.  After graduating from Yale in 1792, Mr. Whitney was travelling west of Georgia when he noticed the difficulties growers had with cotton production. Most cotton plantations in the South could only use “green seed” cotton, the kind that would grow inland, which took too long to separate from its seeds.  Many of these plantations were on the brink of insolvency, and at that time growers had as much difficulty making money as removing seeds from the fibers, which required much time and labor. By 1793 Whitney managed to invent a machine that mechanically separated seeds from fiber. This invention would eventually pave the way to the industrial revolution in English cloth manufacturing.