The reason I bring this up is because I am about to commit the same annoying crime against reason and suggest that it is important for coffee businesses to think about the needs of the market, except when it’s not. I’d had these two different thoughts that I wanted to post and I realised that they contradicted each other so it made sense in my head to post then together. This is perhaps somewhat connected to what I spoke about at SCAA symposium…¹

LOOKING TO THE MARKET

There is an idea that was posted by Kevin Kelly back in 2008 that I love and talk about a lot, but I realised that I’ve never written about it on here. It is called 1000 True Fans. I’d strongly recommend taking a break from this post an going to read it, as my very quick summary won’t do it justice and it is a great idea.  Obviously this was an idea targeted initially at artists, and focusing on how to do what they love in an ongoing and profitable way. Regardless, it has been incredibly influential on my thinking and makes everything seem so much possible, and exciting.

What I take away from it is this: you don’t need to appeal to everybody. In fact you don’t even need to appeal to a particularly large number.

From a cafe perspective having 1000 regulars would make for a very successful business. Not many cafes are actually able to deal with that much volume do their requirements are a little lower.  The point isn’t the number itself, it is thinking about how many customers you actually need. Coffee is wonderfully varied and no aspect of it is universally appealing. For the coffee experience you want to sell – how many customers do you need?

Within your business catchment area – do you believe that there are that many people who would love what you do?

Perhaps a more important question: if you work your prices out backwards, starting with the number of drinks you want to sell, work in your costs of goods and overheads, and some profit – how much should things cost?

When you have that number the last question is: are you able to deliver product where the value and price match up?  If the answer is no then a piece of the business puzzle is wrong. Wrong place, wrong offer or just not a viable idea.

Looking at things this way we can start to assess ideas for other ways to retail and present coffees. If I wanted to do fine dining coffee, maybe 50 covers a day, short hours and meticulously prepared drinks and food – how much would in the average cheque have to be? If the answer is £30 a head then we have to decide if we can make a coffee experience worth that.

Looking at the pool of consumers we can ask whether there are enough people who would love this. This brings me to my contradictory point:

IGNORING THE MARKET

Traditionally we determine the preferences of a market by observing its habits. This makes sense; lots of people are buying product x so that must be what they like, and this must be the best product available.

The problem here is that the market is working with very limited data. This is mostly out of necessity; it is impossible to be deeply knowledgeable about every product category that you have to make a decision about.

I firmly believe that people buy based on quality and accessibility. In many cases people don’t buy better because they don’t know that better is available, or it is too difficult to buy (be it price, convenience or intimidation around the experience).

I don’t see people sending steaks back to the kitchen because they’re not sweet enough.  We don’t expect steaks to be sweet, because the world has given us no reason to expect such a thing.  As an industry we often get angry with the consumer for not rejecting bitter, poor quality coffee.  When life has taught them that this is how coffee tastes, why should they reject it.  Great coffee is still barely available – and I mean truly great coffee.  The fact that they are not asking for it does not mean they wouldn’t enjoy or prefer it.

If I had looked at the market when it came time to open a roastery, then we should have abandoned the idea of focusing on coffee quality because the market for it in London (a city of 8 to 12 million people).  The smart business choice would have been to focus on soluble coffee – because that is what everyone drank, or maybe dark roasted coffee , or perhaps coffee imported from Italy.  The market showed no apparent demand for light roasted, characterful coffees.

I maintain my mantra of “people like nice things”.  Of course there is preference, but then (as I said before) we’re not trying to capture everyone’s attention.  We believed enough people would be interested to create a viable business.  We still hope to be right….

1. My excuse is that Niels Bohr said this was ok, and perhaps even helpful so I am going to go with it.

   If you hold opposites together in your mind, you will suspend your normal thinking process and allow an intelligence beyond rational thought to create a new form.

   I should add that I just like Niels Bohr quotes and I am not going to claim to create a new form here…

Working with what you love is a goal for just about everyone.  In any industry there are people stuck, hating where they are and dreaming of turning their hobby into a living.

Within the division of the artisan, of the craft, of the quality focused, there seems to be a pervasive idea that to be in business with the end game of making substantial profit is at odds with the very reason they got into the business.  They’re there for the coffee, and not for the money.  It isn’t about profit, it is about quality.

Perhaps I fell into that group initially.  I don’t really want a lot of stuff, I’m not hugely motivated directly by money.  (I’m motivated, I can’t deny – but it isn’t the primary decision making factor.)  It took me a little while to realise that profit was not the antithesis of being quality focused, but was actually a requirement for being sustainably quality focused.  I can’t continue to work within coffee enjoyably unless the business I work within can support that, can grow and evolve itself and that requires money.

I might see some strong disagreement here, and I’m not picking on people – I am pointing the finger at me as much as anyone else.  I haven’t sold out, I haven’t become money obsessed.  I am extremely interested in a sustainable business that can support those that work within it, and allow them to grow and progress and to earn what they are worth.

Where I might really get into trouble is where I suggest that our industry’s tolerance, and proliferation, of not-intentionally-profitable businesses has lead to a marketplace with undervalued and underpriced product.  This in turn is somewhat debilitating for new businesses opening into that market place.  It makes the challenge of succeeding in coffee even harder.  I could well be wrong, but I am still struggling to understand an industry where dramatically better product sells for barely a premium against mass market, commoditised coffee.

I remain a big advocate for competition – the experience can be incredibly beneficial to those who enter, and they provide a strong value to the industry.  In its current format the competition is in its 13th year.  (By current format I mean espresso, cappuccinos and signature drinks assessed by sensory judges along with a technical assessment too.)  I would estimate that there have been well over 10,000 performances within these current restrictions.  I’m not saying that everything has been done, but watching it at the moment I’m hesitant about the direction baristas are forced to take if they’re looking to innovate.

I’d enjoy seeing a few changes that would refresh things so here are a few ideas.

THE MILK DRINK

Let’s get rid of the milk drink.  I’d call it a cappuccino but barely any cafes serve the drink we call a cappuccino in the competitions (a shame btw).  It is a difficult drink to judge, because judges tend to have an unrealistic expectation for just how strong the coffee taste can be under the demanded ratios.  In order to score better we often end up compromising our coffee – be it ingredient, roast or extraction.  This is a shame.  Also – we have another competition now for the milk patterns, and while WBC has a decreasing focus on latte art I don’t think any of us would mind if we couldn’t make capps onstage any more.

Replacing it with brewed coffee would be the obvious choice – though there is now a separate competition for that also.  I also accept that espresso preparation is more universal than brewed coffee, especially single cup brewing.  Just an idea….

THE SIGNATURE DRINK

I like the signature drink.  It is hard, it is interesting and a clear point of difference.  I’m all for treating coffee as a viable culinary ingredient.  What I’d love to see here is the restriction lifted on it having to contain a single espresso, and have its flavour dominated by that coffee.  I’d love to see any coffee extraction method allowed, and the drink rated for balance, and the use of coffee as an ingredient rather than pushing us towards unbalanced drinks using a difficult extract.  I’d also be interested in changing the ruling on alcohol to allow extracts to be used, perhaps a rule suggesting that the overall alcoholic percentage of the drink must be below 1%.  (i.e. the alcohol should not be clearly detectable when drinking it).

LIVE SCORING

This one really comes down to a choice of what people want the competition to be.  If we want it to be for ourselves, then we can skip this part.  If we want to engage the wider public then we have to do something to actually engage them.  I’ve been active in barista competitions for 7 years now, at every level.  The problem is that I can stand onstage as an MC, watch a group of six finalists compete up close, and have absolutely no idea who has won.  None.  This makes it very difficult to engage with, when watching.  If nothing I am seeing is useful information then why should I watch at all?  Other sports (and yes, barista competition is a sport) that involve individual performances usually show times/scores as they go.  It makes them exciting and engaging.  It requires more transparency of judging, and certainly puts pressure on judges – but that’s no bad thing.

A BIGGER CHANGE

What if we got rid of the current format and asked people to present a menu of three drinks.  These drinks are pretty much open house – whatever you want.  From all espresso to all signature drinks, to all brewed coffee, to all milk drinks, to everything in between. This could be so interesting – many facets of judging would carry over (consistency, waste, technique all apply from technical judging and balance, flavour accuracy and general quality apply to any and all coffee drinks).  I’d be so much more compelled and engaged if I didn’t know what each barista was going to present.  It would be fun!  It would allow greater experimentation and allow us to embrace coffee’s wider potential.  You may well hate this idea – that’s ok, it is just an idea.  While these may just be typed up and posted for fun – it does beg the question:  will the WBC format be the same forever? If it is going to change, how would we want it to?

BARISTA COMPETITION

I don’t think there is something inherent to the format of barista competition that is more attractive to men than women.  I think, looking around the world, that culture is often a big impactor.  Looking at Greece, where I can’t remember the time I last year a female competitor (let alone champion) I can find its polar opposite in Russia where I can’t remember the last time there was a male national champion.

Looking to the UK, where I have perhaps more experience, there have been wild swings in the level of participation from women.  This year there was very little, though in the past there have been higher levels.  I’m aware with such a limited set of data, it is hard to rule out the effects of a level of natural randomness.  I could see, however, that the competition was made more or less appealing by the organising to body.  I’ve certainly seen incidents of sexism and unacceptable behaviour from those within organising bodies, in this country and in others.  That said, I’ve seen other unacceptable behaviour that had nothing to do with gender that would be equally off-putting.

It might also be worthwhile if we stepped out of this whole gender mindset and looked at the fact that the competition is varying in its attraction to people.  Those people may be women, they may be men, they may be straight or gay, they may be caucasian or asian.  I think we blinker ourselves if we choose to focus on one arbitrarily defined group who we feel we’re missing.  If we look at how many past competitors we fail to retain then that might also be a worthwhile thing to investigate to improve participation and the overall level.

“WOMEN IN COFFEE”

The other facet of this that makes me extremely uncomfortable is our tendency, through this discussion, to label those who buck the apparent male-focused trend as “women in coffee”.  I’m sorry, did I miss a meeting where we decided that equality was no longer about stopping the definition, pigeon holing and labelling of people based on an arbitrary characteristic such as race, sexuality or gender?  It’s awkward, it’s patronising and I’m fairly sure that very few of those being labelled define themselves professionally based on their gender.  It isn’t helping.

In fact, isn’t this the very root of the thing we’re trying to avoid – the industry treating members differently based on their gender?  If there is evidence of women failing to achieve professionally in coffee, of being paid less, of being passed over for higher level positions – surely this should be our real concern.  Are we seeing this? I can’t work out if there is irony in the fact the company behind the competitions (World Coffee Events) is staffed entirely by women.  SCAA’s Symposium this year was just under 70% male speakers – is this evidence that the SCAA (an organisation where over 80% of the staff are women) has gender bias?

Ultimately – what is our concern here?  If we’re looking at barista competitions then I don’t think we can (or should) make sweeping statements about gender here.  They are not universally appealing to baristas in the coffee industry – I think we can say that.  I think that changing this would benefit the competition (more participation) and the industry (more baristas benefitting from competition experience and being better at what they do).  I think a sole focus on gender results in discomfort, and division. That is unhealthy.

THE LAST WORD…

I think a shared perspective on this is helpful, so I wanted to post a quote from Anette.  She is much more eloquent on the subject than I am, and has a different perspective:

What I object to is still being defined as the ‘other’, the one that’s not the norm. No one asks a guy what it’s like to be a man in coffee, or comments “Didn’t he do well, and for a man too…” when winning or achieving something. We’re always stuck with being looked at with a set of different expectations, prejudices and attitudes just because we’re female, and that annoys me. We don’t deserve any more (or less) praise for doing something just because of our gender. We’re just people. I’d hope to be a role model because I’m a person being good at what I do, and not have it always be framed by my being a girl being good at something. I don’t want to be encouraged to compete because someone’s worried about it not being PC that there are not a lot of women competing, I’d like to be encouraged to compete because someone thinks I can win, or benefit from it, as a professional coffee person. I reserve the right to be impressed or unimpressed by someone’s performances irrespective of their gender.

I’m aware that I get to be dismissive of being referred to as a woman in coffee because in theory, I live in a relatively gender equal culture and part of the world. However you border or define it, I’m already privileged and I’ve been spoiled enough to become a bit blazé and nitpick at little things like this. There are moments I’m proud of being specifically female in coffee, especially when travelling to certain origins where women and men are not used to seeing women in positions of authority, importance, expertise. And that’s both when I encounter discrimination against myself or fellow women, and when I see that my gender challenges peoples expectations for what women can be and do in a positive way.

Recently when visiting a coffee mill, I was told that the exclusively female sorters had an entirely different response to seeing me coming through for a visit than they do when a man comes through to visit. In cases like that I become an example, and being a woman in coffee becomes  a different thing all together, an element of actual political and cultural importance rather than me feeling a bit talked down to when being referred to one over here. Whether or not being referred to as a woman in coffee bothers you or not depends entirely on the circumstance and the person/people defining you as such.

In the UK competition discussion, I think a lot of girls here simply don’t find our current competition scene that interesting. And that’s ok, I think a lot of guys find it uninteresting too. I don’t think those women who do want to compete feel they have to overcome or endure any particular male chauvinistic culture if they do chose to get involved. That said, there are always situations where you’re certainly reminded that you’re seen first and foremost as a woman. I and many others have had our share of comments, nationally as well as internationally… But that might just as much be down to generational attitudes or individual abilities to behave professionally as anything else, and more often than not, gender doesn’t feel like an issue. When it does you have to lead with positivity, shrug it off or tell them off, hold your own and do your thing, and be good at what you want to be good at, whether it’s competing, judging, organizing, roasting, cupping or training. There is a time for bitching and complaining, but personally, if that’s all women do about it, or if we somehow make men think they have to bitch and complain about it on our behalf, I don’t think it’s making it any better or any more fun for any of us.

I went to visit Blue Bottle’s store that opened a few months ago by Chelsea Market in NYC.  To the right hand side of the bar there is a staircase that takes you up to a little bar up at the back of the shop.  There are six seats at the bar.  There are various coffees available on the syphon bar, as well as cloth filtered pourover (nel) coffee.

I’ve talked in the past about how important and how useful certain signifiers can be for helping a customer get their expectations in line with yours.  As I sat down I noticed that at each place setting was a linen napkin.  This one tiny thing turned out to be an interesting and powerful gesture.  It indicated that you were going to be well looked after.  It indicated that this was going to be an experience that you had at the bar – rather than one you take away with you.  It indicated that things weren’t going to be super cheap.

These expectations were all fulfilled.  I was well looked after, I spent 40 minutes there, and I had fun.  The bill (had I been able to pay!) would have been $13.50 before tip, for a coffee and some (very tasty) brioche toast.  I felt this was absolutely appropriate when I considered the rent, the service and the cost of laundering lots of linen napkins…

If someone has come in, queued like a customer then they have the right to pay for their drink – to experience what you offer as a non-industry person.  If you want to comp them something then offer an additional thing as a gift – whatever you wish they’d ordered or whatever you’re excited about.  Coffee people usually have a solid tolerance for caffeine, and are always excited to try the coffee the barista is enthusiastic about.  In this scenario everyone wins, a gesture is made but the feeling of freeloading is prevented.  This is nothing new – this is something that happens in restaurants all the time, and is significantly less loaded (with guilt, leverage or awkwardness) than a comped meal.

I’ve a bunch of topics that I want to post about after my time in the US, and I think I’m going to keep them short and several, rather than one big long thing.

In the past prices paid to producers for higher quality lots were usually a lot more than the C but still tied to it, often in the form of a differential.  For this reason, when coffee’s C price spiked they had an impact on every price paid.

Looking back historically you can see prices were depressingly low, then stabilised around the $1.20 mark and then in the last two years things spiked dramatically.

The more you watch the ‘C’ the less comfortable you get with its existence, because it doesn’t really seem to be a very sustainable way to do things.  I understand the concept of the open market, of abundance and scarcity affecting price.  As you watch the C you realise that perhaps, perhaps these things have an effect on macro movements but in the day to day they really matter very little.

Looking at this chart you would think that a growing global demand, against generally insufficient supply would push prices up.  You’d also understand that Brazil having a great crop this year – to the extent that we may have a surplus – would surpress prices.  Often though you see price movements based on a host of other factors.

To give you an example of this:  On March 22nd coffee’s price fell by 8cts, to a recent low of 174.45.  This rapid drop was caused by data released concerning Chinese and European manufacturing and its decline.  News that China’s manufacturing activity had declined for the 5th consecutive month had an impact across all commodities that day, rather than coffee specifically, but that still doesn’t make one feel any better about the fact that for producers the price is massively out of their control.  You could argue that given enough money, you can influence things.  I read a little about rumours that Brazil’s government was looking to lend producers money to prevent them selling when the market was too low and wait until prices improved without immediate pressure.  This seems like a relatively difficult thing to pull off if you don’t have one of the largest economies in the world.

As purchasers of coffee, we’re generally able to control our sale price.  If our cost of goods goes up, we maintain our margins and our retail price increases accordingly.  Impacts of spikes in coffee’s price can be dealt with, and we are able (in theory, anyway) to run sustainable businesses.

Back to producing coffee – we should probably look at the other major impactor on the economics of this: the cost of oil.  This is a pretty good metric for looking at how the cost of production may change year to year, month to month, or even day to day.

With oil we see massive fluctuations.  I’m aware that oil affects us, that it affects the cost of goods for many businesses.  It doesn’t really reflect the changing cost of coffee though, because that baseline price has become so disconnected.

I am aware, writing this, that I still know very little about commodity trading, about why we have ‘C’ price at all or why we remain so wedded to it.  I don’t know if it is possible for organisations in producing countries to produce a price indicator – calculated on the price of production, as well as a margin in there too.  This kind of thing is way above my pay grade but using a moving average of crude oil’s price across the period of time where producers are typically putting in a lot inputs may give some insight into the cost of production in a particular country at a particular time.  This would give some level of predictability – because as a producer you know that the cost of production may vary but your margin will remain reasonably intact.

Surely something that is at least sympathetic to the unique conditions rather than tied to global macro-economics would allow a more sustainable industry.  The free market would end up having an impact on the prices actually paid – but I’d rather look to an indicator that is relevant.  The ‘C’ is not a good thing for coffee, but we’re currently stuck with it because – as an industry – we choose to be.  I suppose this is because it suits those with the largest financial interests more often than not, but I don’t know how we can talk about sustainability long term when we are at the mercy of such wild swings and unpredictability.

Within specialty I expect more producers to begin to work in a way that is less bound by the ‘C’.  Long term I don’t see the ‘C’ staying high, because technology will rise to meet the demand for commodity coffee.  Speciality will likely split in its pricing structure, but I don’t really know what kind of timeframe we’re looking at for this.  Writing this is mostly about getting various thoughts out of my head.  I may well have just made myself look pretty stupid and ignorant, I just don’t know… I’d love some input on why my ideas are stupid, or why the ‘C’ is good for coffee.  For that reason I’m going to open up comments on this post.¹

1. I would ask that comments stay on topic – not about the fact that comments are not open on other posts.  Thank you.

Part of this is because I am trying to finish a much longer piece and that is soaking up a lot of the things I’m thinking about. I’m also trying to create talks I’m proud of for events like SCAA’s upcoming symposium.

I’m always hesitant to write a blog post about writing blog posts. They’re not quite as infuriating to read as posts about not having written blog posts in a while, butI can’t deny that I’ve reached a point with this website where I have to make a decision about its direction. I’ve reached this point before, blogged about it, and the fact that I am back here once again says that I failed to make a clear decision.

It isn’t like I have stopped learning, but I feel like a lot of what I am learning is hard to write up and to share. It gets harder to write when a lot of learning is based on mistakes, and while many of these mistakes are my own – some are not. I think good writing about business is writing about people’s mistakes. I don’t want to write about those, it would feel invasive and abusive. I do think we need to talk about our mistakes more, to accept their inevitability – especially if we are taking risks and trying new things. Innovation involves being wrong a lot of the time.

What doesn’t help all this is that the coffee industry often feels like it is full of false secrets. These are things we keep secret unnecessarily – either on purpose, or to save face, or simply because everyone else does. Classic examples of this would be keeping the components of a blend secret. There really is no point in this, there is no commercial advantage to this but it still happens.

Another classic secret would be roasting techniques. The commercial roasting community is loathe to talk about roasting techniques and ideas in public. However, if you’ve discovered something genuinely innovative in roasting – it is going to be very hard to keep hold of. The idea is going to spread, you can’t patent it or control it. Unless the discoverer is the only person to ever roast coffee at a company (which, let’s be honest) isn’t hugely scalable – then that idea is going to leak out.

It is easier to get information on roasting theory browsing home barista and home roasting forums. Even then, the sum knowledge available is pretty thin on the ground leaving me with the conclusion that as an industry – we don’t really know what we’re doing. Another clue: no company in the world is able to execute roasting with absolute consistency in achieving best possible/desired results. This isn’t a slight on anyone’s business – coffee roasting is ridiculously hard, and often makes very little sense. Most roasters have gotten to where they are through a mixture of a little theory and a great deal of trial and error. There generally is not, at the heart of these practices, a genuine understanding. There is no book I can recommend to get someone started with roasting, to give a basic introduction to key ideas and concepts.

I don’t want to take this too far down the topic of roasting, or down the topic of secrets. When it comes to talking about mistakes (in our roasting or anything else) – I know it isn’t really going to happen. We may all agree that we’re all pretty forgiving of mistakes, but that still doesn’t mean talking about them in detail in public feels ok. In terms of this blog – I think I’d rather find another avenue to publish my mistakes, when I’ve had a bit more time to think about them.

I worry sometimes that I’ve artificially trapped myself in a certain sort of writing on this blog. Writing about macro-issues in the industry, trying to take a more detached perspective in the hunt for ever-elusive insight. This can be challenging, this can be incredibly enjoyable but on occasion in can take the fun out of things. So I plan to have a little fun again. I’m going to stop trying to make every post a fully fleshed out idea, and go back to a simpler form of sharing. I’ve got some travel to the US coming up – NYC, Washington, Chicago then to Portland and then down to LA. I’m going to try to post more photos, more bits and pieces. I doubt it will get to the 5 posts a day every day, “isn’t this what twitter is for?”-style posting, but I will probably be a little less precious for a while about what ends up on here.

In other news – there will be another group of podcasts coming, but more about those another time.

Often I just want to write about coffee, but lack a little direction or a topic of focus.  For that reason I’ve really been enjoying my involvement in the Wet Mill tumblr blog discussions.  For those who haven’t been following along yet:  a few coffee professionals (listed on the sidebar of the blog) have been dragged together by Oliver Strand to discuss coffee stuff.  Right now the topic is all things to do with coffee varieties and I’ve learned a lot already.

Hopefully if you haven’t seen it you’ll enjoy the 20+ posts already up and will follow along with future discussions.  I’m excited to see where it will go…

In reading up more on the subject I became interested in two different descriptions of innovation:  incremental and disruptive.  Incremental is something that we’re certainly much more familiar with in the coffee industry.  Things are slowly improved through rounds of feedback.  Sometimes this can happen relatively quickly – raw coffee being a potential example.  Cupping providing a feedback loop to improve an annual process quite effectively.  Other times it can happen incredibly slowly:  Coffee grinders…. need I say more?

Disruptive innovation is much more interesting, but there seem to be fewer people in coffee playing this particular game.  Disruptive innovation can be described as a technology that creates a new market, a market which comes to make existing technologies obsolete.  DSLRs are a pretty good example of a disruptive technology.  What is notable about these sort of technologies is that initially the market ignores them because they appear inferior in certain aspects.  When DSLRs hit the pros were sure they would continue to shoot on film – digital couldn’t compete with the look and feel of film.

I’m not sure this counts as disruptive innovation but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by Starbuck’s announcement about creating a joint venture with the Chinese Ai Ni Group in Yunnan province for processing coffee and dry milling.  Oddly, this went largely unnoticed which made me doubt its importance.  Interesting that this is a venture part focusing on export, as well as doubtless being part of Starbuck’s supply chain in a new, potentially explosive market.  China feels like a big unknown to me – I have no idea how quickly consumption could tick up there, and how that could impact the delicate demand/supply balance we have going on right now.  Is their increased vertical integration going to give them a noticeable advantage in this market, and potentially other markets too?

It is more depressing to think that a more obvious disruptive innovation is the whole single serve thing.  It is easy to point out the flaws – it doesn’t taste amazing, it is expensive.  It is proving that this stuff doesn’t really matter to the market.  Maybe we’re going to continue to ignore it, while it may slowly make what we do increasingly obsolete.  No one is going to argue that vinyl doesn’t sound better, but it doesn’t do much to change the fact that this matter less and less to people, and technology is catching up all the time.

Depressing right?  If anything it ought to be inspiring us to do something about it, to move speciality coffee out of the place where people compare amazing coffee to single serve, preground pods.  I have no idea how we do this, but it is certainly worth thinking about…¹

1. After an interesting conversation (sadly shorter than I would have liked) with Stain Horne in Oslo last week – I am proud to have made it to the end of a post on innovation without talking about Apple.  I am also aware that that last sentence invalidates this footnote.