As I walked into the kitchen to pick up a bottle of water, I heard her call out to me: “I am making coconut Indomie”
I was stunned, “What?? Have you done that before?”
“No, but I want to try it out” she replied confidently.
I had to instantly revoke a promise I made to myself in 2012 that I would never eat Indomie again and request for a sample of the experiment. I mean, this is no ordinary Indomie afterall; this is coconut Indomie!
I usually consider myself to be the most innovative mind anywhere I am, but this time I had to pass her the crown. There was no way I could have thought of that.
Yes, I know its just Indomie and anyone could have thought of it, my major interest and reason I am talking about Indomie this morning is not because I am hungry, but because I want us to take a step back and analyse the THINKING and THOUGHTS behind cooking the coconut Indomie.
A willingness to try something else
One of the most backward quotes I have ever heard is roughly translatable into English as:
“Let us do things the way they ought to be done so that they will turn out the way they are supposed to turn out”
People who live by this mantra never live at all! All their lives, they live by the assumptions and conclusions of what other people that lived before them propounded. They die without allowing any of their own thoughts to ever surface.
If we do not try something different, we will not see anything different.
It was Albert Einstein that said it is insanity to do the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results.
World changers have to be willing to do something different, not holding on religiously to yesterday’s ideas and practices. A willingness to face today and think of how best to approach the situation, rather than consulting manuals that have been written since the 1900s.
The purpose of reading books is not for you to go about quoting it everywhere. The reason we read books is to enhance our mind with their own views and understanding. Armed with their own knowledge, we can now take it all a step further. Advancing mankind’s body of knowledge ought to be the goal of everybody.
The more knowledge we mine from the universe, the better the life we can enjoy.
Mr Morebise, it is just Indomie!
Yes! Today it is just Indomie, but every great innovator started somewhere. They started their life of innovation from a small corner and gradually as confidence increases they can then think up and execute big ideas.
Starting from coconut Indomie is good enough, the crime is if it stays as coconut Indomie and no new experiment in another 3 years.
A Willingness to be wrong
If you are not prepared to be wrong or for things to turn out badly, you can NEVER come up with anything original. Even though nowadays, people seem to like every crazy idea I think up, I know it was not always like this.
I used to have wack ideas, really wack ideas. But the boldness to speak up regardless of what others thought about my idea was a key.
I once tried to make “sweetened rice” by boiling rice in honey, it turned out to be a disaster. But I tried it out, it left the confines of my mind. That is innovation! It was not a success story, but that does not make it less of an innovation than my SMS newsletter experiments that fetched me an award nomination.
She was willing to try the coconut Indomie even though she had not seen anyone try it before and even though she was not really sure how it would turn out.
Find it, Package it, and sell it!
And so, the coconut Indomie turned out to be very interesting. If you would like to get a copy of the recipe, she can make it available for just $100 (That is about N17, 000).
Some readers are wondering, why would I buy a recipe for $100? Well, that is how the world runs.
KFC’s whole business operation is running because of a secret recipe Colonel Sanders invented many years ago. Coca-cola has not been really pirated much because of the well guarded secret recipe they use to make the drink.
My question is this: in all this years, why has no employee of these companies brainstorm and invent a new recipe?? Did the original recipe creators come with 2 heads?
Anybody that finds a valuable idea, food or software should package it and not hesitate to sell it. Selling your ideas is what completes the chain. It is completely useless to do the hard work of thinking up new ideas if you do not have a way to sell it.
In fact, selling your idea to others is more important than finding the idea in the first place.
Innovation is not hard!
I always say innovation is not hard, it simply means trying to improve what you did yesterday, a willingness to experiment. This coconut Indomie serves as a very simple illustration.
So, incase she is reading this, I want to publicly say thanks for the coconut Indomie, it was “very interesting” and please do not stop allowing expressions for even the most crazy ideas that pops up into your mind.
__________
Watching The World
- A Kenyan company has developed an innovative “smart jacket” they hope will reduce deaths on Kenyan roads.
- If you are interested in the Google developers ecosystem, you should read this interview their sub-Saharan Africa representative had with The Punch Newspapers.
