Red Bulb: An Innovation in Disguise

Preface

This is a fictional story on how innovations happen at a fictional company called “The Bulb Company”. Any resemblence to any company alive or dead is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1: The Bright Idea

“The Bulb Company” is an industry leader in producing bulbs. Currently, the world has seen only white-colored bulbs. Most of these white bulbs are made by “The Bulb Company”.

One fine day, the CEO of the Bulb Company comes up with an idea: “Why don’t we produce colored bulbs? In particular why don’t we produce red colored bulbs?”

After a lively boardroom discussion involving charts, optimism, and at least one person saying “This could be big!”, the CEO calls a press conference:

“The Bulb Company has always led the world in lighting innovation. In just three months, we will launch a revolutionary new product: The Red Bulb.”

The press applaudes. But inside the company, the engineers are still wondering how on earth do they make red bulbs.

Chapter 2: Red Filament

The CEO gathers the senior engineers and asks them to come up with a plan to “Make one million red bulbs in three months.”

The senior engineers nod, then gently point out a small detail: Bulbs are basically a filament housed in a glass box. Bulbs glow white because of their filament. To make them glow red, they would need … a filament that glows red.

The CEO smiles and replies “Perfect. Go find the red filament!”. And so begins the great search for the Red Filament.

For a month, senior engineers test materials day and night. They try everything that they can get their hands on. But, nothing seems to work. One colleague finds a remote research laboratory that seems to have been working on something similar. They had just announced their magic material that can glow red under some “controlled environment”. They try the magic material from the research lab. It glows bright red for 3 seconds and then turns into smoke.

Eventually, the team reconvenes and reluctantly accepts the bitter truth: they don’t have the red filament.

Chapter 3: Thinking Out of the Box

Undeterred, the CEO brainstorms with the team. One senior engineer suggests: “If the filament won’t cooperate, then why don’t we try something with the the glass box around the filament?”

They explore the idea of glass that turns red when heated or electrified, like molten glass, but something that is still stable enough to call it a bulb.

The idea inspires a new wave of experiments. After another month, the verdict is in: the glass has many great qualities, but changing colors isn’t one of them.

Chapter 4: Back to the Basics

The team gathers again. There is only one month left. Everybody is looking for a miracle to turn the situation around. One senior engineer puts his hand up and says:

“What if … we just paint the bulb red?”

A silence falls. Then, slowly, heads nod. The CEO considers it. “Excellent idea!” he says. “But we can’t just say we painted it. That would be … too straightforward”. After a moment of strategic reflection, he continues:

“What if we create a sleek device: a sort of mini-torch where the bulb is hidden inside a stylish black box? The light comes out red. The bulb remains … confidential.”

The idea gathers momentum, and soon the room is filled with sketches, refinements, and approving nods. By the end of the discussion, everyone agrees that this just might work. The design is promptly patented, ensuring that even if someone else stumbles upon the same delightfully practical idea, they can only admire it from a respectful distance.

Chapter 5: The Artisinal Dip

The senior engineer takes the approved design to his team of junior engineers:

“We have got fresh work. We are on a high-impact project targetting release in the next month. We are going to be producing a million red bulbs”.

He then reveals: a large sack of bulbs and several tins of red paint. He continues:

“Each one of you pick a handful of bulbs from this sack and paint it red.”

The junior engineers are confused. They look around. They are five of them in the room with a sack of million bulbs in front of them. They do some quick math involving hands, hours, and reality. They conclude that even if all five of them use both their hands and legs to paint, this plan still looks very ambitious to pull off in a month.

After discussion, one junior engineer proposes:

“What if we dip all the bulbs into a giant paint tub?”

The team is thrilled and cries “Efficiency! Productivity!”. But the senior engineer does not seem to share the same excitement. He notes: “But the coating of paint might not be perfectly uniform.”

There is a moment of silence, again. Another junior engineer offers a more refined strategy:

“Let’s segment our customers into two tiers. Premium customers who are loyal to our brand or shop in our premium outlets, or make frequent purchases in general are in the first tier. These are a small number of customers and would get the hand-painted bulbs. This tier interestingly also covers the executives.”

Everybody listen curiously. He continues:

“The second tier includes all other customers. The customers in second tier would get bulbs dunked in the paint tub and dried, possibly unevely or let’s call it the artisinal dip finish.”

The senior engineer thinks for a moment. He discusses it with his superiors. The plan is elegant. It gets approved. Production begins. In two weeks, the red bulb torches get ready to hit the shelves.

Chapter 6: It’s a success or is it?

The bulbs hit the market. They sell out within a week. Homes glow with a warm red hue. Customers are delighted. Sales break records. The company celebrates.

Months pass. The paint on the bulbs slowly start pealing away as they are exposed to heat. But, the CEO addresses the issue with confidence in the company’s quarterly earnings call:

“The Red Bulb version-1 was a tremendous success. We are now launching version-2 to fix some of those longevity issues that our customers have been facing in version-1.”

Powered by the record sales, the company goes on a hiring rampage. New divisions are created. One division creating brighter red paints, another division for creating additives to make the paint last longer in the heat, another division to explore quick drying methods, and yet another division to create tools to spray paint the bulbs. The company is on its way to fix everybody’s concerns from customers who complain the paint is peeling off to employees who complain that they cannot paint any more bulbs by hand. The company’s future looks bright.

Chapter 7: The Innovation

In a distant lab, a group of researchers continues working on the original idea: a filament that actually glows red. Remember those filaments that burnt in 3 seconds? Those were from this research lab.

The researchers quietly watch the launch of the red bulbs from “The Bulb Company”. Soon, the red bulbs become popular. The researches face the heat. Their prototypes improve from seconds to nearly a minute. But despite an order of magnitude improvement, people ask:

“Why reinvent the wheel? We already have the red bulbs. We don’t need this expensive filament.”

Their funding goes dry. For a while, the researchers shift their focus from coming up with a new filament to “creative grant writing”. Every buzz word is used on the way: AI, quantum, red photonics, and even climate change. Allegedly, the red paints contribute to indoor pollution. Some researchers add a twist with a medical application that requires a specific wave length of red light. With some gymanstics on the paper, the lab secures funding. The researchers continue to work on their core mission: the red filament.

Ten years pass. They finally succeed in creating a stable, glowing red filament that can last years.

Chapter 8: A New Era

The breakthrough makes headlines. The Bulb Company is quick to notice. In a sweeping restructuring, The Bulb Company fires all its employees in the paints division. New manufacturing lines are introduced to mass produce the red filament. The Bulb Company starts selling red filament bulbs. The new bulbs are brighter, longer lasting, and require no paint-related debates. On the flip side, there are now fewer employees around to argue about anything at all.

For customers, however, it is a new colorful era. With one bright idea at a time, the innovations continue.