On Inventing

Mark Poncy’s Blog
On Inventing

As an “inventor”, I am frequently asked, “what invention has profited you the most?” Interestingly, the answer lies in failure – an unfortunate consequence of most endeavors, though they are invariably the ones from which we learn the most.

I had designed an original structure for a catamenial tampon for menstrual use (which matured into U.S. Patent number 3,999,549), whereby the benefits of a soft spongy foam material, used as an interface (arranged as an outer coating), were combined with the superior storage capacity of a condensed long-fiber inner core (i.e., compressed cotton), to yield a tampon that remained comfortable, resilient and reliable for considerably longer than was previously possible with conventional designs. The year was 1975; I had just returned from a visit to the Personal Products Company, a division of Johnson and Johnson, who expressed great interest in our work; and we began our preparations to hand-manufacture a few thousand of our “silver bullets” for panel tests that J&J was to run.

I already knew what the panel test would show, as we had convinced several of our friends to try them out, and virtually every user became an enthusiastic devotee – it was getting difficult to keep everyone in supply. We hadn’t spent the money yet, but it was looking good – very good – and it would take a completely off-the-wall unforeseen catastrophe to keep us from scoring a huge win (the annual US tampon market at the time was in excess of 3-1/2 billion units, and growing).
An unforeseen catastrophe like toxic shock syndrome.

Just prior to our meeting with J&J, the Proctor and Gamble Company came out with a pretty unique “beanbag” product that they compressed into a tampon delivery cartridge, and the product was hot – while we tested ours against it, and had come out winning every contest – their product did outperform the rest of the field, with the result that women were leaving them in place longer than usual – leading to a highly dangerous syndrome known as “toxic shock.” (Technically, this was because the longer wearing time encouraged the growth of anaerobes - normally held in check by the competition of aerobes and their vulnerability to oxygen - which could incite the emergence of TSS.)

If women felt comfortable leaving the P&G product (it was called “Rely”) in longer, and that tampon was highly implicated as the causative agent in several toxic shock cases, what would happen if we were to release our device into the field? We had beaten the pants off Rely in in-vivo testing – surely we’d be inviting disaster, hoisted on our own petard of having designed the ultimate in structure-function efficiency.

So, I picked up the telephone, spoke with the Personal Products Company head of Marketing, and went home, had a glass of champagne, and went to bed.

But when I awakened the next morning, I realized I’d just learned a life lesson, one that now, forty-five years later, still ranks right up there as one of the big ones.
Don’t spend it ‘til you get it. And always look out for the unforeseen – you can usually count on it happening.

(Silver lining: if it weren’t for the unforeseen, would we really want to get out of bed in the morning?)