Number of words – 224

The late Marcel Bich acquired the patent to ballpoint pens following World War II and founded the storied BIC Corporation. He initially envisioned BIC as a stationary company that would specialise in selling low cost ballpoint pens. From the late 1940’s through the early 1970’s BIC management spent most of it time developing innovations within the low cost plastic disposable writing implements.  Innovations in the period were varying the number of a colour of each pen, putting gold trim on the pens.

Once can easily imagine an early brainstorming session in which various executive suggested BIC create different sized pens, multi coloured pens, ones with erasable or invisible ink, but imagine the response when one BIC executive gingerly proposed that the pen company considered making lighters. The proposal would have seemed preposterous….. until the other executives shifted their perception to see BIC, not as a pen manufacturer, but instead as a designer and maker of all manner of disposable inexpensive plastic items. The keyword changed from writing to disposable. Nothing changed in the world in front of them; this was not a new idea as plastic razors. And lighters already existed. But once BIC executives made this mental jump, the company’s expansion into other areas probably seemed both logical and obvious.

Excerpted from ‘Thinking in new boxes’ by Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere