Move Fast, Fix Things

The history books tell us that Karl Benz was inventor of the car.

He was the first person to build a practical car and the first to get a car into production.

He was a great engineer and a perfectionist.

But his perfectionism almost cost him his place in history.

After developing and patenting the car Karl then tinkered with the design.

Then he tinkered a little more.

And then some more.

Until two and a half years had passed with no sign that that car was ready to be released.

Activist thinking

Karl was married to Bertha.

Bertha was the main investor in their family business.

But no money was coming in, and the likelihood of that changing was receding.

She could see that Karl's pursuit of perfection was only going to continue.

But more concerning was the fact that motor vehicles were banned from public roads.

Something needed to be done.

The 'Motorwagon' was ready and it needed to be showcased, to turn Karl's obsession into a business that would support the family.

On the 5 August 1888, without telling Karl, Betha jumped in the car with her two young boys and headed off to drive the return trip to her mother’s house 66 miles away.

During the journey Bertha discovered issues that only appeared in a real world test, and she had to develop solutions as she want.

The Motorwagen only managed 25 miles per gallon and it had a tank that only held 1.3 gallons.

So Bertha needed to fill up the car four times.

But there were no fuel stations.

Twenty miles into her journey she stopped at an apothecary and bought their entire stock of ligroin (a form of petrol used as a cleaning product).

Next the wooden brake blocks wore out.

Bertha needed a better solution so she stopped at a shoemaker and got them to make some leather pads.

Finally she encountered a number of hills which forced Bertha and her boys to get out and push.

So on her return she got Karl to add an extra gear.

“DO IT, THEN FIX IT AS YOU GO. Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you’ve got, and fix it as you go." ― Paul Arden

Don't ask for permission

By testing the car in the real world, Bertha discovered and fixed essential issues, that Karl could not have anticipated.

In one journey, the car changed from a theory into a practical solution.

And her demonstration caused a sensation throughout Germany.

It was a PR and Marketing triumph.

By driving over 130 miles, she’d demonstrated that this much maligned oddity was a safe viable competitor to the horse and carriage.

With interest in the car rising, the rules were relaxed and Karl was allowed to drive around Munich, “followed by a great crowd of breathless pedestrians, and the astonishment of everyone can easily be imagined”, as reported by The Münchener Tageblatt.

Bertha's proactivity kick-started the business.

“She was more daring than I. Bravely and resolutely she set the new sails of hope” - Karl Benz

The car went into production, by the end of the nineteenth century Benz was the largest automobile company in the world, and the business is still thriving today as Mercedes-Benz.