Have you ever been stuck in a rut. Doing things the same old way because that’s the way they’ve always been done?
It doesn’t matter what field you’re in – whether cooking or building a business. Innovation comes from experimentation and often necessity.
Had an interesting first hand example of this the other day.
We’re currently staying with Barbara’s sister and hubby in Belgrade.
We were going to have some friends over, and Barbara thought we could contribute by cooking the meal. We knew the “Europeans” couldn’t eat the sort of hot food we do, so decided on a couple of milder Asian and Indian dishes we could basically do blindfolded.
The Indian one takes a number of staple spices. Barbara’s sister had some of them, but not all.
In Sydney we’d have driven to the Indian spice shop and everything would have been easy.
Not so here. Some stuff just isn’t available. We’re talking “normal” stuff like almond meal or slivered almonds. Nor were a couple of the spices.
So we had a choice. Abandon the menu or go with what we had.
We chose the latter. After all the guests wouldn’t know the dishes were supposed to taste anyway.
We innovated. Used what we had and substituted ingredients where necessary.
And the dishes were not only fine – but if anything better than the originals.
More texture and subtler flavours.
The guests, some of whom NEVER ate anything remotely resembling “curry” demolished (and I mean demolished) the food. Some had 3rd and 4th helpings!
Barbara and I looked at each other and thought there’re are some lessons here.
Don’t stop just because things aren’t going to be perfect. Innovate and put something together. You never know – it might just be an improvement.
Your market (our dinner guests) don’t know what to expect – so they couldn’t be disappointed. They had nothing to compare our dishes against.
And finally, necessity is the mother of invention.
When I think about it, many of our favourite dishes we created by accident and then tried to remember what we’d done.
And it’s the same with business marketing.
Try different marketing approaches. You’ll never know what works unless you try it.
Look at other industries for ideas and combine them in different ways that will suit your business.
If it works for Chefs who undertake “fusion cooking” – taking ideas from different cultures to create new and unique combinations, it’ll work for you.
So if you’d like help creating your own brand of fusion marketing, we can help.
Drop me a note and we can have a discussion as to where you want to take your business and how we can assist you.
Rashid.
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