The Egg Theory

Compared to the bachelor days, my experimentation in the kitchen has gone down significantly. After a long time I cooked a breakfast for myself today. Being lazy I decided to make some ready to mix Upma (for those who don't know what Upma is just Google it ). But when I put the pan on the stove, I felt like adding a dash of my creativity to the 3 simple step process ( boil water, add the upma mix and simmer on medium heat for 3-4 minutes) mentioned on the pack. I thought to myself I deserve better than this for a Sunday morning breakfast, something more lavish and elaborate. Well....I opened up the fridge and grabbed almost everything that came in my sight - capsicum, cauliflower, carrot, beans, green chilies, frozen pea, cashew nuts and few more I don't remember. Stir fried them for good ten minutes and then followed the 3 simple steps :) All in all a three minute job took me almost thirty minutes..but at the end of it I was very happy and looked at it with a lot of pride and admiration. I relished every bite of it, not that it was tasting very different from the simple mix. The mix has dried vegetables in it already. But the sheer fact that I invested so much of time in preparing it had somewhere made me fall in love with it already. This is a classic case of creator's bias. Creators always tend to overvalue their work and greater labor in creation tends to higher degree of over valuation. This is an interesting insight for any marketer, especially if you are in the business of selling product or creativity. Let me explain you the classic "egg theory" on this.

The culture of pre-mixes was introduced in the late 1940s in America.Various forms of baking mixes for making biscuits, piecrusts and cakes were launched in the market. But the cake mix which required simply adding water and baking it was not adopted with as much of enthusiasm by consumers as others. For a while the companies thought it was an issue with the formula and tried changing ingredients and flavors, but all in vain. But later some psychologists found out that it was not the product but the process that was the culprit. The cake mix simplified the process to such an extent that people din't feel that the cake they made was actually theirs. Then Pillsbury came up with a mix where they left out the dried eggs and required the creator to add fresh eggs with milk and oil. The sales immediately took off. This idea then became popular as the "egg theory". You can find many such examples in the Indian context. Think of Maggi. In early 90s their positioning was completely on the convenience, it just takes 2 mins to make the Maggi. While this was a great proposition for the market then which lacked ready to cook products, it got them positioned in the snacks category. Soon they realized India is not a snacking country and if they have to achieve volume growth they have to be a replacement for a main meal. That's when they completely changed their communication towards health, taste and experimentation in making Maggi recipes by adding vegetables and other ingredients. The moms in India unless and until spend 10-15 mins cooking something for their child, think they are not doing justice to their motherhood. It's again the creator's bias, of course every mom wants to provide the best food to their child. And when they cook something they attach a lot of value to that food, even if it doesn't add any marginal utility. 

While as a marketer this can be a killer insight, as a people manager or a leader this can be a killer of your credibility and acceptance within and outside your team. We all as managers at times get very possessive about our own ideas and projects. While there may be a strong logical reason behind why we think so, we can't escape the creator bias as human beings. Whether we accept it or not, the fact of the matter is we always over value our own ideas. An extreme case of it can be when you become an elective listener (way past being a selective listener) and process the information which only corroborates or confirms to your ideas. You develop a form of cognitive blind spot which is not due to lack of resources or information, but because your creator bias is so over shadowing that it doesn't leave any room for them. Be watchful of this especially if you are in an authoritative position, because the flow and intensity of right information is even more constricted because of your power distance. Then it's not the "egg theory" but the "chicken and egg theory" :) You think your idea is the best because no one else has refuted it or has come up with a better idea, where as you have closed all the doors of your mind to give way to other sources of ideas.

Ok. Now I have talked so much about cakes, maggi, egg,chicken I am hungry now. Time for lunching :)

Thanks for reading through. If you think I am writing bullshit in my blogs and still going on writing thinking it's awesome, then please help me come out of my creator bias. Drop in a line in the comments section.