My Sixth Sense of Wonder was tingling this morning. I was in the shower at a hotel and marveled at how much space I seemed to have in a seemingly small tub. My arms were relatively free to wash my hair without rubbing up against the shower curtain or my needing to stand sideways. The reason for all this "air estate": the curved shower curtain rod of course. In case you haven’t been in a hotel in a long while (or you only stay in fancy-schmancy hotels where they have glass shower doors), the curved shower curtain is basically a regular shower curtain rod that is bent into a curved shape so the top part of the curtain is further away from you when you are standing in the shower. Such a simple idea that has made a huge impact to the shower experience (especially germaphobes that don’t want to touch the shower curtain in a hotel)!

I wondered what the story was behind this simple, yet significant change to the shower experience and found that it was actually created for a slightly different purpose. Here’s the real deal:

The official website of the invention states,"The Crescent Rod® began as a clever solution to a problem. An oval tub required a shower rod, but the extra space along the generous curved sides of the oval tub were wasted with the traditional straight rod design. A rod that followed the contours of the oval tub appeared to be a better solution. It wasn't until this innovative design was applied to standard tubs that the value of the Crescent Rod® was fully realized."

I did a quick search on the patents and found out that Richard Wise is the original author of the patent.

Thanks Richard Wise... sort of.

As an ideator, the most interesting part of this is that the curved rod was originally an idea to address a completely different unmet need: the straight shower rod didn’t match oval shaped bathtubs.

Sure, the curved rod helped create more space for those that had an oval shaped tub (by the way, I think oval shaped tubs are generally higher end so I’m guessing those bathrooms had separate showers with glass doors, thus minimizing demand) but the real innovation came when someone realized using a curved shower rod on a standard rectangular shaped bathtub (the majority of bathtubs) increased air space by 25%.

At Maddock Douglas, we are trained to create ideas that satisfy a significant unmet need in the marketplace. It's always interesting to learn about an idea that, reapplied to a diferent market, fills a much greater need. I couldn’t find that "epiphany" part of the story, but I imagine that the conversation went something like this:

“Hey, these curved shower rods don’t seem to be selling very well, why don’t we tell people to use the curved rods on a regular tub?”

And I’m guessing the initial response was something like, “Why would we do that? It was designed for an oval tub” or, “That won’t work, the curtain will bunch up at the bottom and look funny.” But someone persisted and installed the funny curved bar atop a standard tub - making the benefits immediately obvious.

This makes my Sixth Sense of Wonder ask: how many ideas are floating out there that were created to address a specific need, but could be used to solve a different problem? Got any of these in your innovation pipeline?

Have you seen the new Maddock Douglas Homepage?

Follow Maddock Douglas on Twitter

Read More In: News, Rumors, Gossip, & Trends Culture Innovation Discussion New Products, Services, and Business Models Innovation Community Ideas