The Zippo, a technological innovation

This well-known lighter, created by George G. Blaisdell during the Great Depression in 1932, is in fact a reworking of the Austrian storm lighter. Blaisdell bought the rights to the Austrian design and transformed it by giving it a rectangular case.

It can even be described as a technological product innovation, since the Zippo lighter matches the OECD’s official definition: “the development and marketing of a better-performing product intended to provide the consumer with new or improved services”.
It is worth recalling that Blaisdell’s talent lay in spotting the potential of an existing product that the general public knew little about, and in finding a market for it while improving it: the original Austrian storm lighter had flopped in 1931.
George G. Blaisdell is therefore an innovator in the sense given to the word by Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist known in particular for his theory of “creative destruction”.

A brief look back at the historical context of the time:

The world, starting with the United States, was deep in depression after the stock market crash of 1929. Yet the country still had a taste for the monumental, as shown by the opening on 1 May 1931 of the Empire State Building, then the tallest building in the world, just ahead of the Chrysler Building completed in 1930.
In that climate, the American market was entirely receptive to a lighter able to withstand wind and rain. Thanks to its new rectangular shape, the Zippo wick could be lit with one hand and stand up to any storm.

The Zippo has seen many improvements over the past eighty years. Thousands of different versions have appeared, making the lighter a collector’s item recognised the world over and largely unchanged over time.