Down to the Wire! Talking innovation & the Ford Motor Company

"Its what we've always used."

If you work in sales, how rich would you be if you had a nickel for every time you heard some variation of this expression? (I'm going to go ahead and guess "very")

As human beings, it's our natural instinct to resist change. Even when we are faced with newer, better options, it just feels unnatural moving out of our comfort zone.

Tracer wire is no different. For decades, copper tracer wire has been the primary option to use for locating buried utilities, but there exists a superior option that many are starting to adopt: copper clad steel tracer wire (CCS).

Veteran salesman Sean Cash recently sat down and explained why copper clad steel is the better option in the simplest possible terms:

Instead of having a solid copper core, CCS wire has a steel core with a copper cladding. This significantly reduces the cost of the wire (up to 50%!) while also significantly improving the wire's durability and flexibility.

While there are thousands of similar comparisons one could use to make this point, the "car vs horse" one actually has some interesting historical context to it.

According to a 1922 biography titled "The Truth About Henry Ford" by Sarah T. Bushnell, one of the attorneys whose firm drew up the incorporation papers for Ford's automobile company in 1903, Horace Rackham, received some historically awful advice.

Rackham had beed asked to invest in the company but was feeling uncertain about the prospect, so he went to the President of the Michigan Savings Bank for guidance. The banker advised against the investment, saying:

“My advice is not to buy the stock. You might make money for a year or two, but in the end you would lose everything you put in. The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad.”

Yikes...

Fortunately Rackham didn't heed the advice from the banker and went on to invest in the company and grew a fortune.

Skeptics and naysayers have been present for all major innovations in human history. People were certain television, computers, and mobile phones were just flashes in the pan. The same is happening now with Artificial Intelligence (which I didn't use to write this blog, by the way!)

As the ancient greek philosopher Heraclitus said "The only constant in life is change," so we should always be willing to embrace change, especially if it makes our lives easier ... including tracer wire.

This has been the third issue of Movie Monday, we hope you enjoyed it. Please reach out with any thoughts or comments and keep an eye out for edition #4 next Monday.

Have a great week everyone,

Spencer Knott

Creative Director | Trident Solutions [email protected] |