This Foodie Friday, I come to you with a perfect example of how businesses often get things wrong. I hear you wondering how anything involving bacon can go wrong, but stick with me here and I think you’ll understand my distress.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It was widely reported this week that scientists in China have created 12 healthy pigs with 24% less body fat. If you care to read all about it, the results were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I didn’t bother to read it because it makes me both sad and angry. From my perspective, most pork we get in this country is already too lean. Fat is flavor, and most of the pork we get has very little. The exception is bacon.
I use bacon the way many cooks do. Sure, I bake it and eat it as part of a full breakfast (put a little Old Bay on those bad boys before you bake them – a revelation!). Rendered down, it yields lovely fat in which to saute your aromatics and get any recipe off to a great start. Wrapped around a lean cut of meat, it prevents that cut from drying out. And who doesn’t love to toss some lardons into salads, omelets, pastas, grilled vegetables, or potatoes? Lean bacon defeats the entire purpose of the cut!
OK, most of the above was a little tongue in cheek, but there is a real point to be made here. When we try to “improve” a product we just might end up destroying it. Lean bacon is a solution in search of a problem, and that is the kiss of death to any offering most of the time. Putting aside the issues many people have with genetically engineered food (this was achieved using CRISPR), there are already many lean alternatives to bacon. OK, it might be a stretch to call them “bacon” but they exist.
None of us can afford to waste time figuring out a problem for something we’ve produced. The process works the other way around. Listen for problems that your intended customer base is having and then find a solution. Much of the time, successful entrepreneurs had the problem themselves, found a solution, and then helped others with the same problem. The camera phone, for example, came about when a new father wanted to send a photo from the delivery room (true story).
As you’re moving along in your business, ask yourself if you’re solving peoples’ problems or if you’re trying to find a use for your solution. Hopefully the former!
Consult Keith 