I have, the always insightful, Christine De Lille to thank for the wonderful gift of Anthony Brand and David Eagleman’s “Runaway species.” It is an excellent book that unpicks the essence of human creativity.
Their core thesis is that humans innovate by doing three things: 1. Breaking 2. Blending 3. Bending
The stone age techniques still serve us well in defining new ideas and testing the limits of current ones. Just like we used to bend and blend wicker branches to weave a basket, we now bend and blend code to create a blockchain.
We break things into smaller parts and then rearrange them in new ways to create totally different solutions. We used to break the branches from trees to build a shelter. Now we break value chains and create Ubereats.
The chain of thought
The insight from the book also had a very deep and personal connection with me. There has been a lot of chatter the last couple of weeks about “Surviving IDEO.” People have been sharing their stories about a toxic workplace that is very different from the PR (and then again which workplace lives up to the PR?).
Hiring me was pretty controversial I later found out. I don’t have an MBA and I did my business degree before Excel was even invented. In my first job, only the group assistant had a computer. And that was used to type up meeting notes.
So, I was a bit of a dinosaur that only brought the experience of having started my own company and sitting on two board seats.
The rest of the business designers found me to be a bit lightweight with no experience in discovery-driven planning or unit economics (and other new-fangled business trends).
Yet the workshop I led during the interview process quickly unleashed a deeper understanding of the business value and new business models underlying the case.
I suppose “Think different” works in any context.
Years later Tom Hulme told me that he defended the hire saying: “If all he does is ‘value chaining’ I’m OK with that.” The idea was that I would be able to look at a value chain and find interesting business opportunities by creatively rearranging and changing the steps. A kind of LEGO-level strategic consultation.
Breaking the system
Which brings me to COOKO (Bantu word for ‘Source’); a totally in-the-box thinking, conventional innovation that will upend the industry.
The Cocoa industry is at once highly concentrated and highly fragmented. 82% of all cocoa is harvested in 5 countries in Africa. Ivory Coast leads the pack with about a third of ALL global cocoa.
On the other hand, the nature of the tree and its pods resists mechanical farming. This means the harvesting step is a highly fragmented artisanal labour-intensive process with little oversight or governance.
This is why the industry suffers deeply from slave labour, child labour, and massive deforestation. In Ivory Coast alone more than 90% of the forest coverage has been lost in the last 30 years due to the extractive pursuit of cocoa riches.
Traceability has been written large on the agendas of all international cocoa trading bodies for the last 20 years, yet, as Patrick Stroop’s recent technical report on traceability in Western Africa highlights, very little progress has been made.
Farmers are caught in an economic trap of earning less than $1 a day. This means they lack the capital to invest in better processing. This means the only way they can earn more is to chop down more trees.
Breaking the chains
The slave process is also deeply embedded. Slaves as young as 13 are smuggled in from Burkina Faso. They work for 5 to 6 years as slaves to earn a plot of land that they will farm with the use of slaves.
African cocoa also suffers from deep quality issues. Routinely importers have to throw away about 20% of what they bought because it contains sticks, has not been properly refined, and has fungal infections.
I was looking at this situation with Augustine (who helped me on a 2017 pro-bono project on African refugee migration for Angela Merkel’s Chancellery. You can download the presentation here) when I discovered a simple yet profound solution.
By changing one step in the value-chain, we can substantively change the entire system.
Currently, the process is as follows:
1. Farmer chops the pod from a tree2. Chops open the pod and piles all the beans in a pile in the jungle3. The pile grows over a couple of days and is covered with banana leaves4. Being afraid of theft, the farmers will move the beans from the sun drying and fermenting piles to a safe space at night. This requires a lot of labour because we are talking one to three tonnes.5. The dried beans are then bagged and shipped on huge trucks to a Coop where they enter the visible supply chain.
No proper refinement takes place, and they carry a risk with 10 days of exposure. The beans can be stolen, eaten by animals or rot with fungi in the bush.
This is a far cry from Latin America where the farmer usually drives their beans to a Beneficiario (refinery) after harvest. The better-capitalised infrastructure means more qualified people are looking after a sensitive part of the quality and flavour enhancement.
So what is the earth-shattering idea? A box.
Augustine and I have now submitted the provisional patent (ZA2021/03610) for a box that does a couple of fun things.
It provides the ideal environment for anaerobic fermentation. This is the fermentation where you cut the culture off from oxygen. Simply put, you close the lid, airtight.
When you close the beans in a box, you create a uniquely identifiable product that can be geo-tagged, tracked, and verified. Because anaerobic fermentation has to happen in a sealed container, we can guarantee a chain of custody for the beans.
No one is currently doing this. Patrick Stroop who I spoke to today should know, he just completed a technical brief for IDH and all the major Cocoa industry bodies.
So, how does life change for the farmer? Instead of sitting on the beans for 10 days, we now take it off them on the first day. We can pay them $1 for the so-called wet beans, instead of $1 for dry beans ten days later.
How would your job change if you got paid the amount you would have earned in ten days on the first day?
We strip the need for extra labour because they are not shifting 1-3 tonnes of beans every day.
We provide jobs in the formal sector at the “Beneficiario” where the beans are fermented and dried in a controlled setting.
In essence, the farmer’s role becomes true land stewardship instead of (poorly qualified and undercapitalized) cocoa refining. The incentives for caring for the bio-diversity of their farm and the health of the trees will take centre stage.
Life also changes for the buyers of cocoa. They get a much higher grade of bean, that is traceable to its source. The current paper trail of “book and claim” is made redundant by a physically embedded tracking process.
And the consumer. When you see the: Source Fermented” label, you will know exactly where the chocolate, cake or ice cream came from. You will know that the farmer was paid very well and that we are making a contribution to protecting the environment. No more obscuring and mixing illegally farmed beans with authentically sourced.
The business will also serve as a platform for a massive network of social franchises. We are creating jobs for a while raft of new intermediaries who will do everything from financing, small scale logistics and training for IoT and mechanical engineering support.
Welcome to the future of Cocoa, brought to you in a box.
I have worked in the innovation space for quite a while now. Never have I come across such a simple idea that will change so much. That is why I’m dedicating myself to this full time now. (Don’t worry, the Logic Leap will still come out every two weeks).
Augustine is currently working with 30 farmers to refine 600Kg of beans over a three-week period. The taste test will tell us just how big the quality leap is.
In addition, we are sounding out cultural and habit barriers to adopting a new practice. When you look at the history of productivity jumps they have always created social friction. How can we ensure that the freed time and energy is really directed towards social good?
On our website, I’ll be posting updates on the test results and the evolving team.
Let’s continue to break, blend and bend the current paradigm to produce regenerative solutions for people and planet.
Let’s take that leap.
Three key take-outs:
1. Break What are the component parts? What happens if you slice the cake differently? Has your bias inserted the wrong braking points?
2. Bend How far does the idea stretch? What happens when you invert your assumptions? Can you bend it all the way around?
3. Blend We live in an era of mash-ups, copy and paste, and sampling. Digital solutions make it easier than ever to blend totally unrelated industries to create completely new value.
If you would like further background on the state of the industry, I highly recommend this investigative report:
