The Imagination Machine

 

Chapter Seven

THE NEW ORDINARY

Before McDonald’s, the world’s first fast-food chain was White Castle. In Kansas in 1916, cook Walter Anderson set up a hamburger stand and invented a new way of serving hamburgers (making the patties thinner, putting onions on top). The trouble was, burgers were not popular due to health concerns—burgers at the time were mostly sold at lunch wagons and carnivals, with low-quality meat and poor hygiene.¹ Anderson had imagined and created a new hamburger, but to realize its potential, he needed to create the systems and processes to make take-out, fast-food hamburgers a new normal for millions of people.

Anderson met a business partner, Billy Ingram, a real estate and insurance agent, who envisaged a corporate ...