Rollaboard

Hoang-Chuong Ngo
1 min readSep 21, 2020

Things are still out there waiting to be discovered — or just waiting for their time.

We literally put a man on the moon before we put wheels on luggage in. Well, the first commercially successful rolling luggage, in 1989, anyway. The first patent for a suitcase with wheels happened in 1921 apparently. There sure are some reasons for this 68 years delay of convenience — only rich people could travel by air anyway, and they paid porters to carry their stuff; or that many men preferred putting the suitcase on their shoulder, as it would be more macho.

A comment on The Guardian

In the book “The Social Leap”, author William von Hippel argues that this ridiculousness reflect how we only turns to technical innovations when we social innovations (paying porters to carry your luggage) fail. Writer Brian Weisberg on Medium phrased it as a question:

“What has changed in society recently that would lead to the acceptance or need for your innovation now… and only now?”

More rollaboards are still out there undiscovered, or waiting for their time (and someone to market them well). Innovate!

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