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HBS Professor Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemna (1997), Seeing What’s Next (2004) and Disrupting Class (2010) gave an excellent presentation at this year’s Gartner Symposium ITxpo recently — Reinventing IT. Thanks for the tip, Matt.
Christensen’s a good speaker. A bit heavy on the Kill or Be Killed rhetoric but overall good storytelling, good body language, great use of sound effects, knows how and when to pause. Lots and lots to talk about but. I’m just going to zoom in on the Milkshake Problem.
The client wanted to know how to sell more Milkshakes. So they did some research and they figured out that most people who buy Milkshakes do so in the morning – instead of coffee. Christensen went through his personal multiple “what am I going to have for breakfast?” list and this is what it looked like.
Professor Christensen is partial to the Milkshake. He’s one of the majority of milkshake buyers that get one in the morning. For breakfast, to keep the hand he doesn’t have on the wheel busy on his long commute to work.
You only need one hand and it’s really really viscous, so you have to work to get it up the straw and it takes time and energy. Plus you get little fruit bits that put up resistance so you have to focus and suck harder, and that makes the whole experience a lot more interesting. Plus it’s satisfying.
A banana isn’t satisfying. He didn’t mention the bit about how much work it is to get thing when it’s exactly ripe before it gets too ripe and he didn’t mention the problem of disposing of the peel, which has a tendency to stink. But you can see from the macronutrients table that it’s not particularly competitive when you’re talking about starting the day off right.
Coffee isn’t satisfyng either, in his book. And that may be because, if his other choices are a donut or a snickers bar, he’s probably not talking about a Starbucks Latte — which has 16 grams of protein, on top of 3 to 4 shots of expresso.
But it’s not viscous, and you might not realize that it might be making it difficult for you to sleep, if you’ve been routinely pounding your body with those things. Although, it’s true, you might find it virtually impossible to be productive without one. Been there, done that.
Back to the other two discarded solutions: the donut and the snickers. Both of them have a third of the protein and they’re messy.
Milkshakes are clean. But. They’re not ideal. They could be a lot more ideal. And people are ready to replace all that coffee. I’m pretty sure. That’s coming down the pike.
Long, drawn out meal replacement solution customized for time of day, not just on the desert menu, competing for the Latte price point? Viscous, for consumption through a straw that limits the speed at which you can consume it without actually pissing you off, with an extra chunky option. What do you think? I, for one, would be delighted. I’m sure.
There’s LOTS to play with there.
How do you make a 15-20 grams of protein food bar more like a milkshake?
Without using a blender every time? Howard, what do you think?
Backbone Flute 