“We went round to people in the industry, we went to people who were already selling coffee machines. People who had been selling coffee beans to these sandwich bars. Everyone told us “You can never open a coffee bar in the UK. Coffee bars will never work. We’ve had generations of experience in this world. This is England. People are not going to drink half caff decaff skinny lattes. This won’t work. We know this industry and coffee bars will never work. We’ve tried it before.”
That’s when I realised that our naïveté was our advantage. Because we weren’t weighed down by “This is how we do things”. Our minds were completely open. We naively saw the customer experience and we wanted to bring it here.
That’s when I realised, had we been in the coffee business it would have been a disadvantage for us.
The fact that we were clueless was our biggest advantage. Because our mind was uncontaminated, and that’s often the only way to innovate. Because if you know too much about “This is how we do things” you can’t really see new ways. Your mind is too blocked about finding a new way of doing things, and you end up getting anchored In the status quo.”
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