We Just Got a Tiny Bit Richer

The world we make today is better than the world we made yesterday. In general and in aggregate, products are relentlessly improved. Sure, there are spectacular failures, like New Coke or the Yugo. We notice those biggies, but overlook routine tiny stuff that does work.

Consider the perforations added to the plastic wrapper around a stack of paper napkins. The package now doubles as a dispenser. Neato! My napkins now stay clean until I make them dirty, and they don’t scatter around the kitchen on windy days.

Most cheese seems to be sold in zipper bags these days. The zipper is cheap and fails more than I would like, but usually it outlasts the cheese, which now lasts longer thanks to better packaging.

A million little gains like these make us richer. And our wealth has been ticked upward by another micro-innovation in the world of packaging:

The box looks like it solves customer problems, adding features that meet previously-undefined market needs. I would love it if my pizza came in a box that easily folded to half-size for leftover slices. And I’ve attended many lunch or dinner meetings where pizza box tops were ripped into serving plates. This box makes that process work better.

To me, The green angle is irrelevant, and kind of annoying. I absolutely agree with Vanderleun, that these guys seem to be pious pecksniffs. But if I never bought products invented by self-righteous, self-anointed visionaries, my world would be small and dark.