Selling Blue Elephants: How To Make Great Products That People Want Before They Even Know They Want Them

Chapter 2. Maxwell House’s Calculus of Coffee

The oldest known examples of Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE) come, probably not surprisingly, from food and drink. Food preparation is critical to our path of becoming human. “Cooking with RDE” proved to be critical for more business success in the competitive world that humans created.

Historically new, acceptable dishes emerged agonizingly slowly compared to what we’re accustomed to today in our increasingly busy world. It likely took many generations to experiment and develop so-called “ethnic cuisine.” Most of the natural experiments in cooking were really merely small and slow random tests, mixing together ingredients, cooking over a fire, and tasting. In these haphazard trial-and-error ...