Mattson in the News
“THE NEW YORKER” Magazine Food Issue - September 5, 2005
Malcolm Gladwell’s exclusive article on “Project Delta”
In 2004 and 2005, Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and his 2nd book “Blink” — was an embedded journalist in Project Delta, writing an exclusive article for “The New Yorker” magazine. During this time Malcolm was digging deep into understanding the industry, the objectives and philosophy behind Delta, and spent some time in the lab working side-by-side with our product developers. Pick up a copy of “The New Yorker” magazine to read Malcolm’s unique insights on food industry innovation, and Project Delta.
www.gladwell.com
www.newyorker.com
PROJECT DELTA 2005
FIRST — a test of process:
Project Delta will test 3 distinctive innovation techniques to create a “wholesome cookie.” We choose a cookie as our 1st Delta product because it’s a ubiquitous snack consumed by millions upon millions of Americans every day, and maximizes our potential to generate as many charitable dollars as possible in a short period of time. So the start of Project Delta will be the “ultimate professional high-tech bake-off.”
As you’ll soon read, we are looking to the best practices of the software industry for our alternative development models. This “highly productive” industry is actually quite similar to the food industry in many ways, and Project Delta provides a unique opportunity to assess these alternative innovation methods.
The 3 techniques we will test are:
- Current Industry Practice
- Extreme Programming
- Open Source
Current Industry Practice
The strategy of assembling a new product project team, lead by a single manager/director has evolved since the dawn of the modern packaged good industry in the 50’s. The industry has refined it, scrutinized it, and even re-organized around it to maximize its effectiveness. This will be the benchmark process that we’ll use to determine the effectiveness of other innovation techniques. Filling this role on Project Delta will be one of our “Development Teams” here at Mattson.
Extreme Programming — “XP”
“XP” as it is know in the world of software development, is a lightweight, fast, flexible, small team development technique that challenges most of the “large infrastructure” conventional approaches. This low-risk approach is distinguished by its flexibility, very small project team, and short cycle-times based upon rapid feedback that enables the developers to react fast to changes in design specifications. This process enables each team member to participate in all phases of development — creatively and functionally.
We have studied the philosophy of “XP” for Project Delta, and have adapted it for the creation of a food product, and the food industry. Two of our Product Developers with complimentary experiences (one with well developed culinary skills, the other with deeper food science experience) are collaborating together as the “XP” team using wireless Tablet PC’s and other digital collaboration technologies to formulate the cookie in Project Delta.
Open Source — “Your Opportunity to Participate in Project Delta”
Certainly the most famous and well known collaborative innovation technique that has emerged from the software industry is “Open Source.” For Project Delta, we’ll test this highly effective collaboration technique, and apply it to the creation of products for the food industry.
If you are unfamiliar with “Open Source” — I’m sure you know it by its most famous product, Linux. The Linux computer operating system was initially written as a hobby by a Finnish university student Linus Torvalds while attending the University of Helsinki in September of 1991. He then posted it on the Internet and asked other programmers to build upon his code and improve it — thousands did. The result, Linux is now one of the most popular development platforms on the web, over 25% of the computer servers in the world run Linux, and it is now fueling completely new categories of products — like the TiVo personal video recorder.
How to Participate in “Open Source”
We would like to invite all product developers to apply to participate in the “Open Source” online collaboration on Project Delta. Simply click here to apply to become a Project Delta Open Source Team Member, it will only take about 10 minutes. We will be selecting people from across the industry to participate utilizing our “ProtoThink” digital collaboration technique. As a Project Delta “Open Source Team Member,” you’ll be collaborating with other professionals across the entire food industry in this first step to test the effectiveness of applying the “Open Source” model to the creation of a new product. You’ll learn about this potentially new development approach first hand for yourself and your company, and become part of the team making Project Delta history. Registration will close on Saturday, January 15th, so take a few minutes now to register.
The Consumer Decides the “Winner” — the “American Idol” of cookies.
We can think of no better way to validate the results of our first Delta product, and to help us understand the effectiveness of each development technique, than by having the consumer choose their favorite product. Once we have completed the formulation work by each of the 3 development teams, Mattson will home-use test all three of these “wholesome cookies” among hundreds of US households utilizing our FeedBack CGP consumer testing technique. We’ll enable everyone to check these results “live” via the internet — and together as an industry we’ll watch America choose its favorite Project Delta cookie.
The “Mattson Foundation” for charitable giving.
Once America has chosen a product, then it’s the industry’s entrepreneurial opportunity to bring this new product to market (or more than one product if they like them all) — and to generate charitable contributions to feed the hungry. We are very pleased to announce the creation of the “Mattson Foundation.” This non-profit organization has been created specifically to generate and make contributions to charitable organizations (like Second Harvest, www.secondharvest.com) to help feed the hungry.
And your company can participate. All the formulas for the products that are created by Project Delta along with a new “endorsement brand,” will be made available on a free-license basis to any company in the food or beverage industry, in return for making a 1% of sales donation to the Mattson Foundation. A new “endorsement brand” for these products is currently in development and will be released soon. Project Delta products will be sold under your brand, with a small “endorsement brand mark” so the consumer knows that a charitable contribution will be made each time they purchase your product.
We will also be going to the retail grocery industry and asking them to waive any and all slotting fees associated with stocking a new item — as their contribution to Project Delta to help generate charitable contributions. Wish us luck! We’ll continue to update everyone on our progress with the retailers.
Meet the Press
We are also pleased to announce that Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and his just released 2nd book “Blink” — is writing an exclusive article on Project Delta for “The New Yorker” magazine. Malcolm has been working with us in writing his story about Project Delta since last spring. He has been digging deep into understanding the industry, the objectives and philosophy behind Delta, and has even spent some time in the lab!
www.gladwell.com
www.newyorker.com
This high visibility article, along with press releases and the companies that have already committed to launch Delta products, will quickly generate consumer awareness.
So as you can see, Project Delta is very exciting and unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s a unique opportunity to first-hand test new innovation methodologies, and become good corporate citizens to help put an end to hunger in America.