Six Strings of Innovation

How Leo Fender Pioneered Design Thinking to Create Some of the Most Influential Product Designs of All Time

Name a product that has been seen by hundreds of millions of people, been at the center of some of the most popular works of art in history, and remained almost completely unchanged since its invention. 

I can do you one better and name three.

Their names are Telecaster, Stratocaster, and Precision. Two guitars and a bass. Like three celestial superheroes these beings have come to dominate and define an arena of human life. They have generated untold wealth. They have become the object of dreams and desires. Most of all, they made music.

Just wood and steel. But wood and steel conglomerated in such an ingenious fashion that they served perfectly every guitar player's needs and enabled their wildest fantasies. In the hands of a master, they sang in a voice so clear and so full of emotion that you would swear it was almost…human.

Holly Hendrix Clapton Beck Hynde Strummer Cobain Mayer Sting Swift

Truly, the hammer of the gods. Your uncle probably has one, too.