Deconstructing Product Design

HurriQuake Nail

Ed Sutt and The Stanley Works, 2005

1. For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost — for want of a HurriQuake nail, property damage from hurricanes and earthquakes is roughly twice what it would be otherwise, a cost totaling tens and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars annually. How is it that a mere nail could make this kind of difference? The basis of virtually all modern construction is joining wood with nails to form structure. If the join, wood, or nail fails, so too does the structure. The key is identifying the weak link. Ed Sutt comments, “I had the opportunity to look at hurricane damage firsthand in 1995 when Hurricane Marilyn hit the U.S. Virgin Islands. I saw the impact, the destruction caused by the storm, and the ...