The 5 Year Engineering Journey to a toothbrush?!

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That title might lead those with certain proclivities to think incorrectly about the subject of this episode. In fact, in this narrative-style episode, we look at the invention of an entirely new category of toothbrush that happened back in the early 1990's. 

It may be easy to see this particular toothbrush in a store and think nothing of it, but that's overlooking the 5 year journey that it took to commercialize it. Would you risk committing 5 years of your life to delivering a toothbrush that perhaps no one would want? No?

Well one man did. 

This story contains themes of:

1. Finding the right person or people

2. Solving your own problem

3. Doing what matters to your customers, so that they fight for you

A toothbrush may never match the grandness of the Eiffel Tower, or the prestige of getting to build the White City as described in other episodes, but this one is important because this kind of idea is illustrative of what most engineers should be looking for: a problem they have, that they can apply their skills to deliver, while at the same time needing to stretch themselves into something bigger in order to handle all of the challenges that success comes with. 

I like this story and I hope you will too. 

Thanks for listening to The Engineering Passion Express,

Brandon Donnelly

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Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly