It’s kind of funny when you think about it. "What’s funny," you ask?
I’m talking about the origins of the well-known phrase: "the greatest thing since sliced bread." Apparently, slicing bread was a watershed event. That’s why the first thing that inventor Otto Rohwedder did when he figured out how to do it was to get a patent. And what happened next? Did Otto make a lot of money with his amazing idea? No, apparently not.
Why not? Well, listen to Seth Godin explain the situation. And after you listen to Seth’s presentation you’ll understand how this could happen.
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What I want to know is what was the greatest thing BEFORE sliced bread??
Ernie, the “Pearls Before Breakfast” article from the Washington Post is fantastic!!! What a great study in sociology. It really makes me wonder how I would have reacted if it were in my building.
A colleague of mine once used that expression at a conference workshop in Barcelona. She was from Ohio, there was me and another New Orleanian there, a Brazilian, a Mexican, and everybody else was European.
They didn’t quite get it.