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# Industrial Design

2026-10-18

Jony Ive: How the God of Industrial Design Built the iPhone, Turning Aluminum into Strategy—and Why Unchecked Minimalism Nearly Broke the Mac

Ranked #33 in '100 Product Managers Who Changed the World': Jony Ive (OVR 90.25: Taste 99, Scale 92, Originality 92, Vision 90, Insight 88, Business 82). Steve Jobs's 'spiritual partner' rescued Apple with translucent plastic, weaponized CNC aluminum as a supply-chain moat, and now leads OpenAI's $6.5B hardware bet.

2026-10-17

100 Products That Changed the World · #24: Honda Super Cub

Born in Tokyo in 1958, with over 110 million units built — surpassing the Ford Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Toyota Corolla to become the most-produced motor vehicle in human history. Engineered around a legendary product brief ('A soba noodle delivery boy must be able to ride it one-handed while balancing a tray of bowls, and a woman in a skirt must be able to step through with dignity'), Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa invented the automatic centrifugal clutch, the step-through frame, and the plastic leg shield — turning a biker's toy into Asia's everyday legs. Ranked #24 among the 100 products that changed the world, with an overall score of 91.65 (displayed as 92) — durability 97, scale 95, experience 92, business 90, originality 88, impact 88.

2026-10-16

100 Products That Changed the World · #23: The Safety Elevator

At the 1854 New York Crystal Palace exposition, 42-year-old mechanic Elisha Graves Otis stood high on an open hoisting platform and ordered an assistant with an axe to sever the only rope holding him up. The platform dropped a few inches and locked solid into iron ratchets. Raising his top hat, he declared: 'All safe, gentlemen, all safe!' Before that moment, human buildings were capped at five stories and top floors were cheap garrets for the poor; after it, cities grew vertically into the clouds, giving birth to the penthouse and the modern skyscraper. Ranked #23 among the 100 products that changed the world, with an overall score of 91.70 (displayed as 92) — durability 97, originality 95, impact 95, scale 92, experience 85, business 85.

2026-10-11

100 Products That Changed the World · #18: The LEGO brick

On January 28, 1958, a toy workshop in Billund, Denmark, filed a patent: adding three hollow tubes inside a plastic brick so pieces could snap together firmly yet pull apart easily. The manufacturing tolerance was fixed at 0.002 millimeters, so a brick molded today still clicks securely onto one from 68 years ago. #18 of 100 products that changed the world, overall 92.45, durability 98 at the top, UX 95, originality 92.