>>Jason Grigsby: Thank you, Brady. So I'm here to talk to you about an unhealthy
food that comes in a styrofoam container. And you're wondering why I would talk about
this? Well, three reasons: There are great lessons for businesses; it was captured in
an awesome Japanese comic book; and it takes less time to cook than an Ignite presentation.
So in 1970, Nissin food company is facing financial crisis. Competitors have copied
ramen. So they're trying to figure out what to do. The president wants to expand into
America, but Americans don't have donburi bowls to cook ramen in. So he assembles a
team of people. He brings them in. He says, "I want you to create me a new product. I
want instant ramen in a cup. Everything in it. All you need to do is add water. cooks
in three minutes." Easy, right? But nothing like this had ever been done before.
In fact, the team didn't even know if it was possible. And the only reason this product
got created was because the president had such passion and such faith in this vision.
He believed that this would be a successful product even when things made it look like
it wouldn't. And he convinced the team to take on this challenge.
And they didn't just take on this challenge. They also embraced the constraints that were
given to them. They didn't say, "We need three minutes. No, we need four."
Instead they said, "We'll make this happen." Sort of like a 5-minute presentation.
So the first challenge they had was they had to figure out a container design. They needed
something that would hold boiling water that people could carry that would cook the food.
And way that they came up with the container design was that they created thousands of
different containers with lots of different material.
And I love this description of this iterative design process, of ideas piled upon ideas,
this trial and error process and what comes out of it. And it's the way to really great
products. And, at the end of the process, after several months of doing this, actually
came up with a very innovative container, something that was revolutionary. And we don't
think of this as revolutionary right now. But at the time it really was. It was using
new materials in a way that had never been done before. But this was just the first challenge.
The second challenge was the president said, "I want toppings. I want meat. I want vegetables.
They need to cook in three minutes as well." None of the food processing techniques of
the time could do this. So how did they solve the problem? Well, they used freeze drying!
I love this, right? Only in Japanese culture could you get this image with lightning in
the background and all this sort of stuff. This is a mundane moment, but this was key
to actually creating this product. And the only reason it happened was Ohama Zan (phonetic)
was trained in food chemistry, not food processing like the rest of the team. But food chemistry
wasn't going to help him find red shrimp. And red shrimp was the next challenge, because
red shrimp were considered a delicacy in Japan and the president wanted them. But Ohama Zan
(phonetic) was limiting himself. He wasn't thinking about the many different varieties
of red shrimp in the world. He was only looking at the ones that were common. When he opened
his mind, he went into a bar and he found the red shrimp by ordering a shrimp cocktail.
I love this Obi-wan statement that this is the red shrimp I've been looking for, right?
The next challenge was that they had the container design, but the noodles were either burnt
or they weren't cooking all the way through. And they needed to figure out a way to make
that happen. The way they ended up solving this problem actually turned out to be really
simple. They suspended the noodles. They put less noodles in the container. They suspended
the noodles in the container, and then convection took the hot water through noodles and cooked
them all the way through. But like any revolutionary product, people
weren't ready for the cup noodle. People thought the iPod would suck when it first came out.
People thought cup noodle was redundant, that it wouldn't sell, that it was expensive. Some
people even asked if it was really food, which is something we ask ourselves sometimes.
So Nissin figured out they needed to go back and look at the way they were marketing it
and if they were marketing it in incorrectly. They were selling it the same way they sold
ramen. And really what they needed to do was they needed to talk about the time savings
and the convenience of the product. What set it apart from other products?
The other thing that they did which was different was they went to Ginza, the major shopping
district in Japan, and they gave it away free for two days. By the end of two days, they
had lines around the corner of people who interested in trying out this product. Word
of mouth advertising. Now you know the secret of cup noodle. The
freeze drying technique keeps the colors in, the nutrients in. The suspension of the noodles
in the cup actually allows them to cook fully. And the container serves three purposes.
But this isn't the amazing thing to me. The amazing thing to me is that for over 30 years
cup noodle has been disaster relief food. It's the way we addressed USSR's collapse,
the Asian tsunami, Katrina. There are warehouses of cup noodle waiting for the next disaster.
And the final thing is that I love how this comic book is celebrating all these small
moments along the way, whether it's finding the red shrimp or figuring out freeze drying,
make sure to celebrate with your teams. Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]