The Accident That Saved Millions of Lives (And How You Can Have Similar Accidents)

In 1956, Professor Wilson Greatbatch was in his workshop at the University of Buffalo building a battery-powered machine to record the heartbeats of animals, when he accidentally installed the wrong component into his machine.

He’d intended to install a piece designed to record electric pulses. Instead, he installed a resistor which generated 1-second, repeating electric pulses. The machine was useless, and Wilson would have to start over.

By chance, later that afternoon, he went to lunch with two medical doctors discussing a problem called heart block. Heart block occurred when electrical signals from the two of the heart’s upper chambers didn’t reach the lower chambers.

At the time, the condition was fatal without 24/7 support from a bulky machine that required electricity. Thus patients with heart block were confined to hospitals or their homes.

As Wilson listened to the doctors describe the problem, he was struck with an inspiration: the machine he’d mistakenly constructed that day could be the solution for heart block! The 1-second pulse was exactly the right rhythm to pace a heartbeat.

He raced back to his workshop and stared at his tiny machine disbelievingly. Measuring just two cubic inches, his device was small enough to implant into a patient, and–theoretically–could stimulate a heartbeat!

Immediately, Wilson threw himself into refining the device. Months later, he took a prototype to a doctor who implanted it into a dog. When the device was switched on, it took over for the dog’s heart, keeping perfect time for 4 hours before shorting out.

For two more years, Wilson iterated, and in 1960, he tested his pacemaker in his first human subject. It worked! And it was the beginning of a revolution in medicine. Once a death sentence, now millions of patients with heart block live more healthily thanks to Wilson’s innovation.

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Just as Wilson Greatbatch discovered when he accidently built the first pacemaker prototype, we oftentimes don’t choose the most disruptive innovations–they come during times of need or, even, sometimes by accident.

Our opportunity is to recognize and welcome the disruptive innovations - whenever or however they come - to help drive our teams and organizations forward. Simply opening our eyes can make all the difference!