And Now for Something Completely Different
Guest Post by Brian Hutton
This year has been one of great change and tumult. A global pandemic, quarantine, massive unemployment, and income insecurity. Add to that a presidential election and social justice issues that have led to protests and rioting. You may think that this is not a good recipe for creativity, but you would be mistaken. Some of the greatest ideas, companies, and inventions were born in difficult times.
During the last global pandemic, the Spanish flu, Kimberly-Clark discovered a wood-pulp based material that was more absorbent and cheaper to produce than cotton. It was initially used for filters in gas masks for soldiers fighting in WWI, but when pressed thin enough made a perfect single-use handkerchief. The new Kleenex was inexpensive and more sanitary than handling and washing a cloth handkerchief. Other inventions of the time included the zipper, trench coat, and the fortune cookie. There was a pandemic, but creativity was not quarantined.
During the great depression Ruth Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn invented the most popular cookie in the world. One version of the story was that she was out of baker’s chocolate while making a chocolate-flavored cookie recipe and substituted a cut-up candy bar. Another telling is that she substituted chocolate chunks for butterscotch morsels. Regardless of the true origin, her customers loved it, and more importantly, Andrew Nestle loved it so much that he bought the recipe and put it on the back of every bag of Nestle’s chocolate morsels and the chocolate chip cookie became a household name.
In 1941, as WWII was raging in Europe, Forrest Mars patented the process to coat chocolate with sugar to keep it from melting, and the M&M was born. And, many other inventions and technologies were born under the shadow and loss of the war. Some were made to protect soldiers, others to bring comfort or a brief respite during a time of great stress.
My point is that even though we are currently in times of difficulty, your unique talent is needed. It is important. You may not be developing a vaccine, but you can still make an impact and the world wants and needs your creativity.
So, ask yourself, what can you do to help? Or try a different angle – what needs do you see that are not being met? Take the product or service that you offer (or are good at) and ask these key questions:
- What can I eliminate from my product/service offering? Restaurants are reducing the size of their menus to focus on what they are best at making and what travels best because takeout and delivery are the only areas of growth. Ask yourself what products or services are best suited for today’s environment and focus on those.
- What can I pare down in my product/service offering? If your service has the deluxe plan or nothing, can you offer, and would the market accept a value plan that is somewhere in the middle? Or, are there parts of your service that can be reduced without impacting customer satisfaction?
- What are customers liking that you can do more of? If they like your safety, how can you be the safety leader among your competition? If you make them laugh, how can you make them laugh every day? Make the little things they love become the big things that keep them coming back.
- What is the new thing that nobody else is doing? This is the difficult one but start with the wish list. What do you wish someone was doing right now? What app or service are you dying to see? What comfort food do you miss in times of trouble or stress? What delicious accident did you accidentally make when trying to cobble together a Pinterest recipe with the closest alternates in your cupboard?
Most importantly, keep trying! Keep thinking! Keep creating! And do not be afraid to make mistakes and have failures. It is all part of the experimentation process and will make success all the sweeter when it does arrive.
Now go do something completely different.
Brian Hutton is an award-winning, patented inventor and marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience in new product development for the restaurant and commercial foodservice industry. Connect with Hutton on LinkedIn. Listen to his interview about ‘Adaptability and Visioncasting’ on the PR After Hours podcast here.
