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Adopting Innovation — The Salad Spinner Mindset
Are we too blind, or proud, to pick up on others’ great and practical ideas?
My first trip abroad changed the course of my life. That family holiday in France inspired a love of languages, a fascination with sardines that didn’t come out of can, and a desire to live under sunny skies amid happy people.
It also brought me face to face with something else we didn’t have in 1980s Britain: the salad spinner.
We encountered this revelation at our very first port of call, the cottage where we stayed the first night after crossing La Manche. Exploring the kitchen for pots and pans, we instead discovered a strange contraption in orange and translucent plastic, resembling some kind of toy version of a top-loader washing machine.
“Oh, that’s a salad spinner,” my mum knowledgeably proclaimed. As a French teacher she had gained undercover insights into such cultural curios on her school exchange reconnaissance trips. “They’re great. I don’t know why we don’t have them back home.”
And that is it in a nutshell.
The salad spinner was born the same year as myself, 1971, patented by Jean Mantelet, founder of the Gallic household appliance manufacturer Moulinex. A genius invention that both provided a…
