Albert Einstein once said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.”

On September 4 in 1957, amid great fanfare, Ford Motor Co. introduced the Edsel line of automobiles to the American public. It immediately stalled. Just over two years later, the product line was officially closed on Nov. 19, 1959.

A number of reasons have been posited for Edsel’s spectacular crash, including: its name was unusual; its design was considered ugly; its marketing was overhyped, which led consumers to expect something revolutionary when it was not; and there was a mild recession in 1957. But none of these are the actual reason consumers did not buy the Edsel. The consumer was not interested in it because Ford failed to find the right problem to solve.

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