When a Chair Is More Than a Place to Sit

Sometimes a small innovation can make a big difference…even with chairs.

Chair Technology

Inflatables

Ikea might finally have mastered inflatable furniture. Their quest began 26 years ago. Then, receiving a deflated chair, customers just had to use their hair drier to blow it up. The problem though was that people forgot to use cool air. Sadly, the hot air cooled and the chair shrunk. Other challenges included leaky valves that, according to Wired, “…after sitting down, an unglamorous farting noise issued from your general direction.’

This was their leaky valve sofa:

However, inflatables massively cut transit volume by as much as 90% so they kept trying. Finally figuring out how to make it feel like foam (and not a beach ball), they will launch the new product line during May. Avoiding the hair dryer, it will come with a foot pump.

Ikea designer is Mikael Axelsson created a prototype of the 2026 version:

Grippers

A Massachusetts chair cushion company figured out how to stop our chair cushions from sliding. Patented in 1997 (and shown as our featured image), the “Gripper’ uses a latex material that adheres to hard surfaces. As a result, our dining room chairs no longer need fabric ties that secure them.

Other Small Inventions

The Drywall Screw

The drywall screw is a building basic. For every 125 square feet of drywall (aka sheetrock) construction crews need 125 screws. In addition, Yahoo tells us that the U.S. consumed close to 28 billion square feet of drywall during 2024. The screws needed to install that drywall could have weighed close to half a billion pounds.

A small invention, the drywall screw makes a huge difference.

Our Bottom Line: Private and Social Return

Long ago, Edwin Mansfield (1930-1997), a University of Pennsylvania economist, said that a seemingly small invention can have a large impact. While he was referring to manufacturing inputs like thread, he could easily have been talking about one of our small inventions. As Mansfield explained, at first an innovation benefits its developer. But then, from there, some innovations go big.

We could name countless small inventions that at first seemed inconsequential. 99% Invisible told us about these four:

Frequently hidden (like the gripper), small inventions make a visible difference.

My sources and more: Thanks to Wired for inspiring today’s post. From there, returning to the Gripper, we also went back to Edwin Mansfield’s research in this paper and at econlife. I also recommend this 99% Invisible podcast and Roma Agrawal’s 2023 book on small inventions.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a past econlife post.