You can be both boring and innovative

Grab roof trusses.

VideoCreditCredit...By Dan Anthony Kelly

Many of us are intrigued by screaming wonders "THE FUTURE" as flying cars. But sometimes the best inventions are more about brain power than technological wizardry. Let me give you a few examples in my quest to appreciate ingenuity in boring things.

Take Apple supply chains and roof trusses.< /p>

I was recently introduced to a New Jersey-based online grocery delivery company called Misfits Market. Many companies have struggled with the cost and complexity of bringing bananas or Doritos to us. Misfits knows this.

The company's response to history of failed deliveries is to think small. It tries to save pennies and eliminate little inefficiencies here and there that can mean the difference between failure and success.

Here are some examples of this what his little innovations look like: Stores and delivery services tend to sell only the average cuts of salmon. Misfits buys and sells the other cuts, which are equally delicious, at a reduced price. Abhi Ramesh, the Managing Director of Misfits, also told me enthusiastically that he had skipped some steps in the long chain of apple farmers, packers and distributors. Pruning a middleman or two can save time and money.

"Annoying problems are the most worth solving", m Ramesh said. This man speaks my language. It's a competitive advantage if a company does a difficult, boring and expensive thing a little better, he said.

There are other food companies who take similar approaches, and I don't know if the company will succeed. But Misfits is an example of a tech company that knows an industry well and believes it can slightly improve upon established ways. This is what technological progress often looks like: a quirky but perhaps lackluster version of what has come before.

Roy Bahat, tech startup investor from Bloomberg Beta, uses the term “hot-swap” to refer to a type of startup that thinks big by tinkering with the status quo. He gave me examples like Flexport, which is trying to streamline the steps for shipping boxes of goods by sea or air, and Newfront, which is trying to do something similar for insurance brokers. (Bloomberg Beta is an investor in Newfront.)

A characteristic of these companies, Bahat said, is that they are not aiming for major change, like Warby Parker l did with glasses, for example. This kind of change can feel scary or threatening, especially for customers in large industries like freight transportation or insurance, he said. Instead, a hot-swappable startup promises something familiar but better.