Seth Godin has started something again by talking about the superior characteristics of the Robertson screw, a discussion picked up by Karl Long and others.
We Canadians puff up with pride over this baby, but it's actually more of a testament to stupid marketing a la Sony Betamax.
According to Mary Bellis, the Robertson was invented in 1908, 28 years before the Phillips was invented. Robertson screws were used in the assembly of the Model T. So there were some genuine early advantages there, which a sensible business owner could have capitalized on.
However, Mr. Robertson was not sensible, he was a Canadian. Despite all sorts of foolishness you can read online about how "Americans are finally catching on" to the joys of the Robertson, this screw should have been more ubiquitous than the Phillips. It was marketing and distribution strategy that failed, not inventiveness.
Here's the Wikipedia version of the story:
Robertson had licenced the screw in England but the party he was dealing with intentionally put the company under and purchased the rights from the trustee thus circumventing Robertson. He spent a small fortune buying back the rights. After that he refused to ever allow anyone to make the screws under license. When Henry Ford tried out the Robertson screws he found they saved considerable time in the production of the cars but when Robertson refused to license the screws to Ford, he realised that the use of the screws would not be guaranteed and stopped using them. This largely explains why they never became established in the United States.
Today Robertson screws are scarce in the United States, accounting for 10% of screws sold, while being very common in Canada, where 85% of the screws sold use the Robertson head.
Wiki says the patent expired in 1964, so hopefully this long-ago mistake of management can be corrected. My prediction? Canadians will soon be importing these screws from the US, but they will have been manufactured in China.
The lesson? You can build an innovative product, but you'd better get the distribution thing right, or there won't be any foundations named after you.
