I remember reading a quote from a man of wisdom. It goes to the effect that the mark of any work of excellence is to make it look simple, and almost natural. How so true about cooking anything of quality in the kicthen. The best dish is one which you cannot see or guess how much labor went into cooking it, and all the ingredients don't come screaming at you. The blending, adding of flavor and other ingredient that help to mask the amount of labour is what makes simplicity the watchword of every excellent chef.
What does this imply for the kitchen table entrepreneur? Take a look at every innovative work of genius, you are immediately struck by the simplicity, wide applicability, and the global relevance . How would its ound if the telephone could only used in only one country, or restricted to a region? What would it be for global communication for the internetto only be limited to only one country, or designed in such manner that only a small group of people can use? Well, we know that China is not excatly averse to innovation, and is on top of technological innovations in all fields of human endeavour. The one bane of poor or third world countries has been their limited ability to deploytechnology on a more global scale.
The Global Currencies of Innovation
Kitchen table entrepreneurship is about impacting the global community with innovations that make life liveable by lessening the burden of living comforatbly, improving communication, and empowering the world of commerce both locally, and globally.
It is important that every innovation looks at the usefulness and ocntributions that thie rinnovative work would make to the society. Some good, some bad. Every work of innovation hold the capability to do good or evil, to lift or put down any person, or group of people.
It is also impoartant to keep in mind that opportunity is all over the place, awaiting to be discovered, lurking in the corners of unknown societal needs, and awaiting to be put together by the KTEs who know where their onions.
The Society is Always in Dynamic Crisis
The one crisis that we often seem to pay attention to is the unfortunate version in Iraq, Middles East and other troubled spots of the world. But a look at any deprived regions, state or nation would reveal that there are many missing puzzles in the equation of societal and global development. Every society has its own quota of the unemployed, failed businesses, ghettoes, and various forms of impoverishments that destroy the fabric of societal belogingness.
The concerns of inequality in the society drove the like of Adam Smith, John Locke, Karl Marx, and many newest versions of these innovative thinkers to find ways and means of creating equality in the society. The arrival of enterpreneurship on the scene of economic development has proved a coup d'etat of unequalled proportions, and drastically tipped the balance on the side of those who believe in working from the garages, kitchen tables, home offices, instead of going to the battle field to kill others so that ideoligical forces would triumph over innovative thinking.
The likes of Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and many others who have used the power of the kitchen table, or such similar humble beginnings to grow multi-billion dollar indutries have really created a legacy that no one ever though was possible. Today, it has become a common place.
Connecting the Kitchen Table to the People
A simple experiment for you. Take a look at your computer, laptop, mobile phone, and any technological innovations around you. Where did they come? Take a look at the work of Michealangelo, Cezzane, Da Vinci and the many other pioneesr in any fieild of thought, and innovation. You would see how much they connect with people's emotional, psychological, and the mental needs. Some people specialize in teaching their works, and yet make a decent living from these craetors who are long dead and thought to be of no use to us anymore.
When your business angel come calling, asking about the viability of your product ideas, thoughts, and creations, what they are essentially trying to understand is to evaluate your contributions, and what makes them unique to worth any dollar of investment.
Therefore, it would be very good to have some way of guidng yourself on the viability of your ideas in the public domain. Below is what i call the AIETA factor, which you can use as a measuirng stick whilst working on your next kitchen table project:
1. Awareness
The one great factor that would help build the acceptability of your innovative idea or invention is for people to be aware of it. Of use is the meal that never gets to the dinning table. The gusets hav enot set their eyes on it,a nd would not be too wrong to scorn your cooking skill, because you never brought it to where they exepected to find it. You must work hard to encourage people to know that your product is alive and kicking.
2. Interest
Now that you have succeeded in bringing your productto the marketplace, the next stage is building people's curiosity to use so they use your product. Remember that it is not easy to get people to part with their money is in the market place, they need to be attracted to using the product. Curiosity in the marketplac emust not be a flash in the pan, but must be sustained, and continually fed to keep it alive.
3. Evaluation
It is important that some form of quality assurance takes place after people begin to use. You waant to zero in on the favourite users of your product, where they live, their age group,a nd where they may best be located. This would help you to build a picture of possible users in other localities, and distant places that you cannot reach at this stage.
This stage would help you to fix things that rae not right, not working well, falling below customer expectations, the price, the distribution channels, and users etc. It another stage for you to educate yourself in relation to what the customers want.
4. Trial
By now you have retuned your product, and allowing it to come to the market again to be used by your customers. This time you want to see if you have created a product that the market wants, and is ready to buy.
Alos you want to increase the number of people who are prepared to use the product, ensure that the price is right, and meeting the needs of every category of your customer base.
5. Adoption
At this stage are the people willing to adopt and use it. It has become strong enough to compete with competitors, and fight its way through the market. You are probably pushing the product to be a market leader in its own niche.
The implementation of this phase is critical to success. The product needs to adapt to market situations, and use. The pricing must encourage adoption, and creative payment methods must allow appeal to all category of users.
Summary
The purpose of every innovation is to meet the challenge of connecting to the needs of business and society in the marketplace. How this connection takes place needs to be systematically planned for, and the convenience of use for the end-users would play a major role in the survival of the product in the targetted marketplace.
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