Shouldn't We Reinvent the Pizza Cutter?

Not long ago, I was trying to use one of those cheapo one-dollar type store pizza cutters, you know the ones; stamped "made in China" on them, with a corrugated pizza blade cutting wheel. Well, to make a long frustrating story short, it didn't cut well on my thick crust pizzas. This was upsetting because I really don't each much pizza these days, but my favorite two teams were playing during the NCAA March Madness championship games. So, I invited my local friends over and of course, you know, you have to order several pizzas, because that is the traditional thing to do.

Okay so, the pizza cutter failed the taste test, miserably or distastefully I might add. Then one of my friends said; "You are always trying to build a better mouse trap at your think tank, why don't you once and for all design a decent pizza cutter?" Ah, nothing like a real live prototype challenge right? Sure, and he was right. During the half-time break we got into a small brainstorming like session, completely ad hoc, and everyone was throwing ideas around about how to make a better pizza cutter. Most of the ideas had to do with the handle and a way to put more leverage on it without breaking or bending the rotating blade.

Other ideas had to do with a better chopping system, or a secondary blade, or a tandem axle pizza cutter, if you can imagine that in your mind. Then, one of my friends started sketching out a different concept. We then went on to Google to look up "new pizza cutter designs" and there were a ton of interesting patents which had been filed, most of which were the very ideas we had come up with in our brainstorming session. Obviously it doesn't make sense to file any patents on any ideas which have already previously been thought of.

We wondered if we might get a hold of some of those pizza cutters, try each one of them out, and put all those prototypes through the test. Some we've seen in the stores, others we haven't, and still others we don't even know if they ever got made, in other words they may not even be available in the real world. This is a job for 3-D printing, and lots of pizzas and inviting a ton of friends over to test various new pizza cutter prototypes on different size crusts (eating the slices as we go), and indeed, we'd have to order different pizzas from different companies.

Trust me when I tell you building the best mousetrap, or even a better one, or anything else will always be a challenge.

Of course, that's why innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors press on. I suggest they never give up, that they strive for perfection, and one day, sometime in the future, someone will have invented a pizza cutter which actually works and is affordable, and mass-produced and readily available to the current pizza consuming public. Please consider all this and think on it.