Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 5 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Where do baby (carrots) come from?
— From Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into The Next Big Thing by Bernadette Jiwa
Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, has been quoted as saying, “Opportunities are like buses – there’s always another one coming!”
And Bernadette Jiwa, business and brand strategist, as well as a fantastic author of many books, echoes Branson’s thought: “every day is filled with opportunities, either seized or missed, ours for the taking if only we can learn to listen for them. Every breakthrough idea starts not with knowing for sure but by understanding why it might be important to try.”
Jiwa goes on to say that we are all able to generate insights to see those opportunities and make the most out of them. Being insightful is not dependent on being special or having resources, innate gifts, special circumstances or any other advantage; on the contrary, anyone can develop killer hunches.
But how?
By cultivating curiosity, empathy and imagination “we become more attuned to opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. A hunch happens at the intersection of all three qualities:
- Curiosity
Interest + Attention: Learn to see problems and discern which ones are worth solving. - Empathy
Worldview + Understanding: Understand how it feels to be the person with the problem. - Imagination
Context + Experience: Build on what is already understood in order to connect ideas and describe new possibilities for the future.”
Here’s an example of an opportunity that Jiwa calls a case study in imagination: baby carrots. Spoiler alert: there’s nothing baby about them. (If you’re heartbroken by this realization, read on, the story of how they came about is remarkable and will make you smile!).
Mike Yurosek was a concerned farmer: from his yield of 2,500 tons of carrots per day, he’d have to cull 400 tons because “they weren’t ‘pretty’ enough to be sold in grocery stores. Carrots that were misshapen, broken or bent couldn’t be packed for selling.”
One day, he had an idea: he cut the ugly carrots into uniformly shaped 2-inch pieces, and then sent them to a packing plant to be peeled. The edges were smoothed out in the process right before bagging. Ta-daaaaa: “the bagged baby carrot was born.”
Yurosek sent the bags of baby carrots to a supermarket in Los Angeles. “The next day [the supermarket] called and requested that he send them only baby carrots. […] The baby carrots were not only popular with customers; they were also a terrific earner for store owners. […] While other farmers focused on perfecting production techniques in order to minimize waste, Mike reimagined the problem by thinking creatively about what it was that customers wanted, boosting carrot sales by 35 percent and transforming the industry.”
Now every time you see baby carrots you’ll think about this story!
ACTION
TODAY: Take a project you are working on and make a list of things that need improvement or that don’t work well. Then brainwrite for possibilities to solve those issues. Let your curiosity, empathy and imagination flow. What did you come up with?
FUTURE: Whenever you come across something that frustrates you, let that be the fuel to reimagine the good or service in a new, improved light. By doing this, you will be developing and strengthening your curiosity, empathy, and imagination muscles. Take the time and make a game out of it. How many things can you change to make it better? How can you redesign it from scratch to take away the flaws? How can you use it for other purpose? How can you add additional features? How can you strip it to the bare minimum? Your answers will surprise you. Keep asking, keep reimagining.
Know someone who loves baby carrots? Or someone who needs to develop their imagination? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!