When Efficiency Isn’t The Point

Louis Chew
An Idea (by Ingenious Piece)
3 min readApr 29, 2021

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Pillsbury started making instant cake mix in the 1940s, but it didn’t sell well.

It didn’t make sense to them because the mix made things easier. All you had to do was add water and you had something you could eat. Other companies sold instant cake mix as well, but the executives at Pillsbury thought that they had the better product because no one had a formula as complete as theirs.

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Louis Chew
An Idea (by Ingenious Piece)

I explore underappreciated ideas. Currently writing about tech and business in Southeast Asia - check out mathnotmagic.substack.com.