Yes, the exhaust burger feels wrong. But it is an intriguing combination and it really can teach us something about intersectional innovation. A basic theme in The Medici Effect is that it is beneficial for innovation to generate lots of ideas. An effective way of achieving that is to intentionally increase the number of unexpected combinations. To me this product is a highly unexpected combination.
It doesn’t really stimulate appetite, does it? But – and this is the important part – it might stimulate new ideas. Some of these may be really useful and since this invention is crazy enough to have torn down our associative barriers these new ideas are also more likely to be radical. That is why intersectional ideas often have more impact than directional ideas.
I don’t think the inventors themselves expect this tailpipe barbeque to be a commercial success but it certainly reminds us that energy is being wasted back there. Therefore it might encourage someone come up with a good way to use this heat - or to see and make use of surplus heat in some other context. Dealing with "failure" in the right way is often crucial for successful innovation. That’s why intersectional ideas are so great – even when they are "bad" they are "good".