ABSTRACT
The common expression “the greatest thing since sliced bread” would make little sense to people before the early 1930s, the years when electric breadslicing machines and wrapped, sliced loaves of bread started turning up in bakery shops in the United States. Suddenly, after more than fteen years of development, the invention became “lucky” and enjoyed widespread commercial success. How did it happen? Why was there such a long delay in technology adoption? Was it due to, as marketing guru Seth Godin claims, the inventor’s inability to publicize the idea, while paying too much attention to the technical implementation and the patents? To answer these questions, let us examine the actual story of Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960), the inventor of the original bread-slicing machine [14].
