A Book About Innocent



"A Book About Innocent: Our Story and Some
Things We've Learned"
image from http://www.amazon.com/

I bought this book a month ago and have not started reading it since this week. Now that I've started it, I cannot understand why I did not start it earlier. I've you haven't read it, I strongly recommend it.

"A Book About Innocent: Our Story and Some Things We've Learned" by Dan Germain, Richard Reed and John Hamilton, has a pretty self-explanatory title. I'm only half-way through but I've been amazed by how such a great business, that has been used many times as a case example, really started. With no resources, strong will and a simple idea they were able to build in 10 years a £100 million company with 250 people. They want to create a business they can be proud of. And they want innocent to become a global, natural, ethical food and drinks company, always remaining commercially successful and socially aware.

The book itself clearly is an example of what Innocent stands for: Be Natural, Be Entrepreneurial, Be Responsible, Be Commercial and Be Generous.
The book is printed on 100% recicled paper with vegetable-based inks. They are simple and direct.

There's a story that really caught my attention, it was how the 3 friends decided to leave their jobs and start the adventure. Let me tell you about it.

To make the story short, the 3 friends had good paying jobs and were working in great companies, but since college they had joked about starting a business together. After they came up with the natural smoothie idea at the age of 26, they started working on the innocent project on their free time. They developed recipes and found a small farmer who would produce and bottle their products. They decided to run a test, they bought £500 of fruit to produce a batch and sell it at a London music festival they were organizing, to actually see if people liked them and if they would be willing to buy them.

How to measure the results? First they wanted to hand out a two page survey to see what people thought about it but realised it was simply to much. The wanted to know a simple thing, if they liked the products. With some help they developed a new simple testing method. They put up a sign with the question "Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?" and put out two bins, one saying "YES" and the other saying "NO", and asked people to put their empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the "YES" bin was full, so they went in the next day and resigned.

This is how the Bins Test was born.

It may not be the most orthodox way to conduct research, but it did meet their purpose. In addition, considering the limited market test budget (which was none) I think the idea was brilliant. This is a clear example that necessity is the mother of invention. (Or as it would be said in Spanish "La necesidad agudiza el ingenio").

Have any of you read the book or have other examples of great ideas pursued with few resources? Would love to hear of them.

Quote - So Much To Do

Stew Leonard's

 I have just been told about this four supermarket chain in the USA, located in Connecticut and New York: Stew Leonard's (or locally, Stew's). It was originally a Dairy shop that evolved to a grocery store that has a very peculiar and diferential retailing strategy. The New York Times has defined it as the "Disneyland of Dairy Stores".

I've never been, but from what I've found online it seems very interesting. The store is filled with animatronics that move, sing, flip in the air, moo,... kids can interact with them,... its a fun place for both parents and kids with a petting zoo with farm animals. Customers are also offered a large amount of free food and drink samples all around the store. They have a curious, simple and very clear customer policy engraved on a huge stone at the store entrance:

Rule #1: The customer is always right.
Rule #2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read rule #1.

From what I've read online, people don't mind going the extra distance to shop at Stew's, they believe the experience is worth it. They've created a shopping experience very unique in all their stores, very engaging and exciting for families. It provides an area for kids to have fun while the parents shop. This new concept of selling has taken away the stress from long lines at the grocery store. The store is not organized like ordinary shopping stores, but has a circuit that takes you throughout the store (even though there are shortcuts). It sounds like IKEA's strategy of directing customer's around the store.

For more information you can visit their website: www.stewleonards.com

Has anyone been there? Would love to hear your experiences!

Today the world is mourning the loss of a genius and a unique mind. All over the internet you find tributes, and references... Thousands of people thanking him for improving our lives. On facebook people are changing their profile pictures, they are hanging pictures from him on their wall, sharing quotes and videos and on their status thanking him and mourning his loss.

I just came across this video: The Lost video of 1984 Machintosh introduction. The video was found in 2004 and released in 2005 for Machintosh's 21st birthday.

After seeing it, you realise he was the master of unveiling and presenting innovations to the world. Witty, smart, funny and simple. He went to the point and made it unbelievebly clear. We tend to want to say to many things (look at the thousand of slides shared in our everyday presentations)... but keeping it simple is an art. It is much more difficult than it looks. But the result is outstanding.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."

“Insanely Great!”

Thank you Steve

Apple 4s - Siri

Apple made public yesterday it's new improvement on the iPhone. Although many were expecting a radically new phone - the iPhone 5 - we will have to wait a bit longer for this new version to arrive. The new device is the iPhone 4s, and I'm sure it will exceed expectations.

Of all the improvements from its previous version (better camera, dual-chip core, ... ), I am very interested particularly in 2 features: iCloud and Siri.

Although we heard from iCloud a while back, I still think it is pretty amazing how the new technology will allow you to sincronize calendars, contacts, photos, and much more from all your diferent devices. It is true that we are currently lucky to interact with different machines but this also adds the difficulty to remember where you have what you need, or where you last updated information. Apple's solution for this current  everyday problem is iCloud. Here you have the presentation of this new feature.

In addition to iCloud, Apple has introduced a completely new feature: Siri. With Siri "Your wish is your command" they say. It's a new intelligent assitant that recognises your voice and is there to help. Just ask. I am very curious in seeing how this works, because voice recognition hasn't always been great, but hopefully they will have gone one step further to ensure it works without flaws. Also curious to see how it will work with other languages besides English... We'll have to see! Here you find Apple's video introducing Siri - I can't wait to try it.

Amazing how Apple gives solutions to consumer insights. Simply amazing.