Hasta La Ideas

Corporate executives so often seem out of touch with the layperson’s experience of products, and I have long dreamed of trapping music company executives in a room where their sole task is to open CD packaging with their bare hands.

Daniel D. Friel is a rather atypical executive: After a 40-year career at DuPont, he turned to invention, motivated by a poor dining-table experience:

The origin of the EdgeCraft concept and our [knife] sharpeners grew out of frustration with my inability to carve well the Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey. In order to carve a turkey, you need to start with a sharp knife. My knife was really dull. I purchased all the sharpeners available on the market but soon concluded that none of them could put a really sharp factory-quality edge on a knife. So I bought a great new set of knives but had the same problem when I tried to sharpen those. That’s when I realized that what the world really needed was a good knife sharpener.

At the time, I knew that in three years I would be forced to retire from the DuPont Company. I did not want to spend my retirement years playing golf, so I went back to the idea of developing a good knife sharpener. In the evenings and on weekends, I would retire to the basement to research the best means to sharpen a knife. I used every tool–the stones and steels; and went through a large number of possible designs for the basic concept of a sharpener. After a few years, I discovered the design I needed….

I did spend a long time in my basement… It took about three years of researching and exploring different methodologies to obtain the best results.

Friel’s corporate experience then gave him insights above and beyond your average basement tinkerer, as he considered how to bring the product to market:

You have to ask yourself, “Would anyone want to buy this design? What is the economic value to the customer? Does it make a task easier, more enjoyable and more time-efficient?” Then you need to know how big the market is if you want to successfully launch a product. Is it realistically large enough? Is the market ready to accept your design? What is the price-volume curve likely to look like?

Read Gourmet Retailer’s full interview with the 88-year-old Friel here.

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