Southern Pacific, in 1953, ran truck trailers on flatcars as piggyback
Southern Pacific pioneered trailer-on-flatcar 'piggyback' in 1953, letting a truck trailer ride the rails for the long leg.
Read the casegenius.wikiA CASESTUDIES.CHAT ARCHIVE
Good problems.
Brilliant solutions.
Ingenious ideas that solved difficult problems. Explore what made them work.
The full archive, in the appPublished cases
3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDNestlé, in 1938, turned Brazil's coffee surplus into storable soluble powder
Nestlé made Brazilian surplus coffee into a soluble powder, so an overflowing crop became a stable, storable product.
Read the caseLASH ships, from 1969, carry whole barges loaded away from the dock
Lighter-aboard-ship loaded pre-filled barges onto a mothership, so cargo could be gathered inland and loaded without a berth.
Read the caseKooringa, 1964's first cellular containership, stacked boxes in fixed cells below deck
Kooringa, the first purpose-built cellular container ship, gave every box a fixed slot and made containerization a real system.
Read the caseA trucker built his own lighter truck to haul more under the weight limit
Consolidated Freightways built light aluminum trucks so a heavier payload still stayed under the road weight limit.
Read the caseSuica turned Japan's train ticket into the country's small-payment rails
JR East's 2001 Suica began as a prepaid rail card; e-money, convenience stores, inter-railway deals and mobile wallets made it Japan's cashless base
Read the caseThe Paycheck Protection Program delivered grants through banks' loan rails
The US gave small businesses money fast by making it a 100%-guaranteed, forgivable 7(a) loan, so banks did the distributing for free.
Read the caseJWT put claims in a signed token, so a server verifies with no session store
JWT packed claims into a compact URL-safe signed token, so an API could trust a user without a server-side session.
Read the caseHTTP/2 kept HTTP semantics but multiplexed many streams onto one connection
HTTP/2 added binary framing and multiplexing over one TLS connection, and dropped in without changing HTTP's meaning.
Read the caseLenovo confronted gamers mid-game and offered a laptop upgrade
Lenovo's influencers used a shooter's body-shield feature to talk to camping players and offer a Legion laptop discount at the moment they felt the need.
Read the caseiHeartMedia optimized playlists to play hits without burning them out
iHeartMedia pairs song-popularity forecasting with an optimization engine so 24/7 playlists are strong today and still have tomorrow's hits in rotation.
Read the caseHellmann's let Brits trade ketchup sachets for mayo like currency
Hellmann's turned 62 currency bureaus into condiment exchanges, letting people swap free ketchup sachets for its mayo to fix a small injustice.
Read the caseHövding turned its bike bell into a geolocated message to the mayor
Edelman re-engineered the Hövding bell so each ring registers a location and emails the Mayor of London, turning frustration into civic data.
Read the caseAqua Carpatica got Romanians to test their own water for nitrates
Aqua Carpatica gave away a nitrate-detecting paper strip so buyers could test any water, making its purity claim verifiable by customers themselves.
Read the caseMonier put steel where concrete was weak — in tension
Joseph Monier embedded an iron mesh in concrete pots, pairing a material strong in compression with one strong in tension.
Read the caseThe Harmonized System gave every traded good one code every customs can read
The WCO's six-digit HS code made the world's customs, tariffs and trade statistics all speak one language.
Read the caseThe SNB promised unlimited euro purchases to cap a soaring franc.
In 2011 the SNB set a 1.20 franc-per-euro floor and pledged to buy euros without limit, ending a safe-haven surge that threatened deflation.
Read the caseIndia auctioned coal mining to any buyer who bid the top revenue share.
India's 2020 commercial coal auction lifted the end-use rule and let private firms bid, selling 19 mines at a 50% hit rate.
Read the caseAmorim kept wine in cork by engineering the cork itself
From an 1870 Porto workshop to the world's cork king: Amorim beat plastics and aluminium by perfecting natural cork.
Read the caseWarby Parker shipped glasses home for free trial
Warby Parker, a startup with no stores, shipped five frames for a free home trial so customers could try on glasses without visiting a store.
Read the case