Failure of The Pudding Palace
The Pudding Palace never made a ripple on the business scene. Poof! It appeared. Poof! It vanished.
But, there it was, for a glorious moment in time, a store dedicated to pudding! Paper bowls, plastic spoons and all. I can still see the handmade sign and metal folding chairs.
Florescent lighting and bare walls gave the Pudding Palace the feel of a prison cafeteria. It didn’t help that two stores down, one of the mall’s largest stores actually looked like a palace, comparatively speaking.
The Pudding Palace, I kid you not, was someone’s revolutionary idea. I don’t want to offend pudding lovers. But, who came up with the idea of putting the word pudding next to the word palace!
4 reasons The Pudding Palace failed:
- Small or no problem. The Pudding Palace didn’t meet a felt need. Great ideas seduce people into sharing solutions that don’t have problems. A solution without a problem is dangerous.
- Personal attachment destroys objectivity. It doesn’t matter how much you love your idea if no one else does. The glory of pudding blinded someone.
- Poor execution. The Pudding Palace didn’t look like a palace.
- Internal conversations. I guarantee the Pudding Palace owners only talked with friends, family, and pudding lovers. They never discussed their idea with a successful business person or potential customers.
5 more reasons great ideas fail:
- Fear of losing what you have. Great ideas often require letting go of worn-out ideas. Organizations can’t innovate and stay the same.
- Perfectionism. Execute imperfect ideas. Improve as you go. (Pudding Palace not withstanding)
- No Champion. Never give a great idea to a talented unbeliever.
- Lack of alliances.
- Too much too soon. Execute great ideas is small ways. Don’t worry about developing a program until you’ve put your idea into practice.
Why do great ideas fail?
I thought you were joking for a second. Examples like these are what cause new to doubt myself and my ideas. In watching a video about Spanx founder I can understand the concept of filling a need.
I’ll have to pay attention to my ideas and check I’d they are filling a void our just hubris to change the norm
Yes, doubt can be as incapacitating as blind belief – and a lot easier to find
The picture you don’t see you can’t create.
I think going to the outside and listening helps us see if our idea will get traction or if we are just stuck on ourselves. Best wishes.
Great ideas fail when the vision is not clear. Where are we going? Why? And what will be different when we arrive. The great idea needs a champion, but I also needs team support. And people can / will support what they fully understand.
Martina, been missing you everyday!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just to clarify so I understand what you meant better.
That ok?
The clear vision of a really really bad idea is still clear, right?
So it really isn’t the clarity of the vision is it? Isn’t it more like a great idea clearly turned into a vision expressed and bought into by others cause they feel it and believe it to? A MOVEMENT?
Simon Sinek talks in his book(Start with Why) about Dr King. He said the people went to Washington not because of what Dr King said but rather cause what he believed THEY BELIEVED! His Vision/Beliefs resonated and set fire and CONNECTED with his .CONNECTED WHY’S CREATE MOVEMENT! Simon says that is why those folks were so inspired.
I clearly understand and believe what Simon is saying! Man is that a great book! Start with Why!!!!!!
I say also a Champion needs a Great Idea! I say joining the Why Movement needs a Million Champions, join us?
We are gonna march one day to all these business that 70% of God’s kids work at and tell those dummies WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!!!!!! Treat all God’s kids better or we are OUTTA HERE!!!!
Build that widget you own darn self!!!!!!!!!!! You had your time of focusing on profits not people and A NEW DAY IS DAWNING!!!!!!!! Grow or WE GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Feel that??????????
Lastly Martina, isn’t it more like people fully support what they believe, not what they understand?
I feel I understand the conflict in the middle east, I do not support it. I feel I understand better than most 70% of US workers leave their job and no one there cares about them. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT IS RIGHT so I DO NOT SUPPORT THAT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I am to be a Champion THAT IS MY CAUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Join me I cannot do this alone but don’t fret, you join me we are not alone!!!!!!!!
Join The Why Movement… Learn all about it and us
startwithwhy.com
Take care Martina inspiring to read what you believe.
Scott
Love the clear vision idea… how can we know where we are going without a clear vision! Cheers
Interesting stuff D man!!!!
Great ideas failing depends on ones definition of failing. Right?
If someone had a dream and they rolled the dice and they got to live their dream for awhile…..is that failure?
Or is failure an idea or dream in a numbskull’s grey matter who does not have the guts to swing for the fences and give it a whirl?
Depends for u on your definition does it not?
Like a person in church belting out a pretty horrible sound. Or is it a wonderful sound cause of how their spirit soars when they are blasting it out? Who is the loser failing to see the beauty of that? I know it sounds terrible but LOOK at it!! Think they are feeling failure?
Up to the perceiver how they receive understanding what is going on.
#1 the need filled was not filled by enough other people. Fulfilled the need of the ones who thought it was terrific!
Market to the masses, live with the classes. Market to the classes live with the masses.
Either is up to you and ok. Just unemotionally depends on if u get out of it what validates who u think u are.
# 3. Did not look like a palace to who? Bet it did to the dreamer who designed it till they closed the door. Would have to me if I saw their beautiful dream and them living it no matter how long it lasted.
They were not the losers, the losers are the ones without the guts to try.
# 4. I got no idea who they talked to so kinda silly to mind read.
# 1. No innovation, closed mind. Like 70% of US workers hate their jobs, Barry Wehmiller 72% love their jobs and STILL few here are willing to put their paradigms on the line and find out about People Centric Leadership. Amazing I say!!!! Answer from MOST, still won’t look but those with closed minds say THOSE kinds of people are are dumb. Cant see they are those kind of people themselves. Yeah figure it sounds internally to those still not opening up and looking kinda like that.
# 3. Never hand off to a person who doesn’t believe what you believe.
# 4 lack of connected Why’s, danger Will Robinson, mayday, mayday!!
Thanks Dan mind stimulating stuff today. Should be plenty to get the thumbs downers digit twitching!!! Hehe
All above just like my opinion based on my experience man, what’s yours based on?
Shifterp back to the present!!!!
Thanks Scott. Failure, it seems, is a matter of perception.
I would have TOTALLY eaten at the Pudding Palace – if for no other reason because I felt sorry for the business. Too bad it doesn’t sound like it would have been enough. I guess playing on sympathy isn’t a good business strategy either unfortunately :/
I think I should have eaten there, just to say I did.
If the Pudding Palace failed I probably don’t have much hope for my dream of a Tapioca Temple: all tapioca, all the time.
Another reason great ideas fail is simply bad timing. I just don’t think the world is ready for my Tapioca Temple. Not yet. So I will wait.
When you start Tapioca Temple, I want to open Whipped Cream World next door!!
and yet the Cheese Cake Factory is doing quite well (actually I don’t know their numbers). A company called Pudding Palace could plausibly have filled whatever need was filled by CCF, but due to the narrow view and poor execution, it was a place no one wanted to be. And if only focussed on pudding, maybe just a little tiny bit too niche? Should they not have merged with Buffet Bar a couple doors down or the Champagne Shack across the way?
A moment of silence for the Pudding Palace…
What I’m noticing in this economy is that crazy ideas (like a store devoted to pudding) are working. With enough oomph behind it and a zany, fun atmosphere, I bet the Pudding Palace might have succeeded. To expand on your points, it needed a passionate advocate to start a pudding-pop cart that served a Pudding of the Day. With success, it might have evolved.
This sort of start-small thinking gets a lot of entrepreneurs, myself included. Years ago I consulted for a fledgling non-profit who wanted to start a compassionate drug rehabilitation program. They had good connections and the right heart. Right across the street from where we met was an enormous shuttered furniture factory. “Look across the street,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be stupendous to one day turn that eye-sore into a community center that housed and empowered recovering addicts?” My purpose was to encourage them and cast the vision.
To my horror, a week later the founders were scrambling to get a loan on the old warehouse! Without their first client and with negligible up-start donations, they were headed for doom. Thankfully, we reeled the loan application back in and dialed back. A massive loan would have ruined the program and crushed its founders. A great program would have been snuffed in its infancy.
Great insights again, Justin. Thanks.
Good point on the power of highly unique environments. Even highly personalized works for me. When we travel, we like to eat at the “local” places not the national chains. Give me some personality. Sadly, the Pudding Palace didn’t have enough personality to make it. Plus, this story comes for many years in my past before individuality was fashionable. Who knows…with a bit of work, perhaps the Pudding Palace could make it, today. 🙂
Great ideas fail for many reasons. One main reason they fail is because of the bystander. You will have some people who beilieve in the idea and forge ahead. You will have others who dont believe in the idea and leave. The bystander is the one who is on the fence and just watches the idea neither going or leaving. They have ideas, thoughts, beliefs but they dont share them and they dont get engaged. I’ve learned its importnant to be engaged at all times. Your input counts. People want your feedback because it adds the oxygen the idea needs to burst into winning flames. Good stuff.
Thanks Chris…it’s true. Bystanders are often energy drainers. Perhaps bystanders are simply cowardly UNbeleivers who don’t have the courage to say what they really think… maybe they just don’t care.
Either way, every idea needs some raving fans.
Yes, but…
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned the great champion of ideas no one knew they wanted. Steve Jobs. Visionary committed to great execution of powerful new ideas. Purveyor of stuff we didn’t know we wanted… Until we saw it. Combining elegant and even unique design to add a “cool factor” that made the Apple stuff more desirable.
Your customers need the capacity to “get” the value to them, of the stuff you’re selling. The value proposition is often complex, driven by multiple interacting factors.
Pass the pudding, please.
Hey Dan,
Let’s not deny it gave you a great headline for your Post Dan, but oh so many versions of the pudding palace exist – world wide!! Accepting Scott’s view on “what is failure?” I think many ideas fail because they don’t find the right sounding board – and unfortunately everyone you turn to thinks they are the right sounding board, further impacted by wanting to give the good news and not the reality check. Having said that many ideas don’t see the light of day because others can’t share the vision and bring down a promising start.
Lack of due diligence, lack of planning, poor execution, not starting small, not starting with big in mind, not being prepared to give all that it takes and accept when you are beat or something needs changing (even the very thing you love most about your idea), and yes not clearly identifying the need and making some attempt at least to quantify the reality of it.
No I wouldn’t even enter the door of the pudding palace – even your description is suffice for me to know that no genius is going to lay in the puddings if at least some of it hasn’t flowed over to delivery of the concept.
Unfortunately all the hallmarks are there that there will be no sweet revenge for the Pudding Palace (just for Doc)
Richard
Great ideas fail when there not great ideas. Sometimes when we think we have a great idea, reality disagrees. Vetting your “Great Ideas” through the filter of wise & experienced people is the first step to not creating a Great Failure.
Great post Dan!
So quartz technology was not a better idea than winding ones watch?
Just because trusted advisors give us their best does not always mean anything.
They are advisors not geniuses. They give their best but sometimes what they got is useless.
When paradigms shift the WORST place to get advice from are from those with the most invested in the old paradigm.
Case in point leadership Old ideas toast, new way People Centric Leadership.
Results. 70% failure with old way of thinking. New way 72% success.
If your advisor can’t see this TIME for a new advisor!!
Think if the Swiss watchmakers could go back they would have kept the technology for themselves? Their ADVISORS told them it was stupid so they gave the technology to the Japanese.
The Japanese had no existing paradigm MESSING up their thinking. They were too dumb to know quartz was the not the way to go so they used it.
10 years later they dominated the watch industry.
Same thing happening in Leadership now.
Trackable results clear to all who can see through the blinders of their paradigms. Still people refuse to see!!! Amazing stuff!!!! Still refuse!!!!
So you want to fail 70% of the time or succeed 72% of the time with ur people ? Choice is yours.
People Centric Leadership, better way, google it.
SP
Thanks for adding this one Douglas. Sometimes, one person’s great idea is another person’s stupid idea! Some ideas should just crawl under a rock and go away… Like when you wake up at 2 a.m. with a brilliant idea only to find, in the morning, you wonder what the heck were you thinking..
A little research in naming also helps when opening a new business…look up Pudding Palace at http://www.urbandictionary.com (NSFW).
Thats just gross!
Let us not forget Henry Ford: “If I had asked them what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses'”. Hail to the big thinkers and risk takers! And…true dat, Douglas Stewart (previous comment), “Great ideas fail when they are not great ideas”.
Thanks for the Ford illustration, Cathy. Sometimes we shouldn’t listen to the crowd…
Dear Dan,
A very useful post.
I like the idea of checking with successful persons of the chosen field first and taking their opinion. A very important thing what most people miss in the name of secrecy or the personal ego. Moreover, throwing the idea with potential customers is essential to get the market pulse before its execution. Actually speaking, all big ideas fail in the market because the poor customers are either neglected or are not heard adequately. There lies the relevance and importance of Market/Business Research.
Lack of alliances or partnering with allied parties/individuals to strengthen the business operations is yet another reason for not-too satisfactory growth within a span of 3-5 years.
Investment in hiring right talents can be an another key factor for succeeding in business or a vice-versa.