The best thing since sliced bread?

This isn’t an observation on sliced bread. But the unexpected, or unintended, cycle of innovation.

It’s pretty obvious humans dive into invention without understanding consequence. Ai, fire, farming, brexit, nuclear, vapes… take your pick of human innovation to pull apart.

The vast majority of innovations that are viewed as ‘the best thing since’ at the time, either have unexpected negatives in the long run, or just come full circle back to where things started.

Whilst we’ll never fully understand the consequences of innovation ahead of the fact. And I’m certainly not advocating that we should stop innovating. Quite the opposite. I’m just observing that perhaps… if we get better at pondering the cultural full-circle of an innovation, we could better understand the future trends and just create better.

Take the infamous sliced bread… a complete game-changer I’m sure we’d all agree. Easier. Consistent. Comforting familiarity. Mass win. A no brainer.

But it arguably led to the beginning of the end for ‘big bread’ producers. Possibly.

It began the mega supermarket aisles overflowing with carbon-copy, pumped with additives, mushy white slices, that as an 80’s kid I grew up with every-single-day in my lunch box.

In parallel, it led to the death of the local baker, the artisan craft, flavour and ritual of real bread.

Which, in turn, spurred on a trend of baking at home. The wannabe Nigellas bragging about their new bread maker and dabbling (at least once) with home baking a boule dense enough to kill a duck.

Then we see the rise of the gentrified craft bread movement. The local deli’s make £5 loaves of sourdough, and the better mass-produced brands struggle to play catch up.

Ironically, all the while, the big players invest millions into marketing campaigns to make it sound like artisan baking just like the good old days. Whether it’s about a family tradition or a little boy on his bike down the road. It’s all about harking back to the times before their own innovation dumbed it all down!

So, is sliced bread really the best thing since sliced bread? Or was it just the start of a long-winded product trend cycle?

What’s my point? Well, if we try to predict the trend consequences at inception, we could not only create better solutions, but we could also create a pipeline of solutions to fit the whole cycle.

I wonder, what else could we predict will come full circle?

The dumb phone.
Physical photo albums.
Cinema.
Slow manufacturing.
Pencils.

What would yours be?

*PS – not all sliced breads are the same. Some change the game for the better… big up Jason’s Sourdough!