I grew up on Findus cuisine. Well, not quite. My mum refused to serve the frozen ready meals. But as a kid growing up in 1990s Britain, I was bombarded with adverts about the joys of frozen food.

Now Findus has come to Denmark. And I’m puzzled. Danes simply don’t have a tradition for frozen ready meals – they’re virgins in this territory. Findus isn’t just trying to enter into a new country market. It’s attempting to change an entire nation’s eating habits. I wonder if they’ll succeed on the basis of their ad campaign, which plays on Danes’ busy lives: ‘A person spends 65 days of their life chopping vegetables’, reads a poster near my house. Is this tactic enough to get a nation – increasingly organic and health-obsessed – dashing for the frozen counter?

Mmmh, not sure. I can see a market in Denmark. But a small (single male) one. Perhaps Findus has done their homework with thorough market research and will surprise us all with whopping sales. Because this isn’t about food innovation – Brits were eating this stuff years ago! It’s about identifying new product markets. And that’s not a one-size-fits-all thing. I’ll be interested to see if Findus is still here this time next year.

The other day I saw this sign in downtown Aarhus. It might be interesting for Novo Nordisk to know that an ice cream maker in Aarhus made a new cure againt diabetes…

By the way  – this photo is taken with the new iPhone 3G

Look at this picture – proof that the US is the mother of innovation culture. In Denmark we also have a tradition for caramel apples. Tradition with a big T, that is. It’s never changed and it is still only possible to get the red classic version that is superimposed bottom right. Randomly browsing I stumbled over this: http://www.amyscandykitchen.com, where the main picture is from.

It’s a perfect illustration of how important it is to look at something you like (the red caramel apple) and think: “that is really nice – how can I make it even better” (look at the that striped monster in the bottom corner of the tray). Thinking “We can do better…” is the heart of progress (a possible path to wealth). Thinking “…and then we can do better again, immediately!” is the heart of innovation (the safest path to survival)- always moving, changing, improving things. Look at this picture and learn a bit about what it means when innovation is a cultural business drive – not just a contemporary management book theme. In the States this drive to innovate somehow repeats itself in just about every business area you look at. Try to impose the feeling from these two pictures on your own field of business, and consider if you do as well as Amy. We can all learn from her:-)