Regards,
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Washing machines for potato peeling sounds like a great idea as long as you are not the guy on IFB support line.

As far as the usage of word dumbest, I have no dis-respect for those people. Just emphasizing the fact that when some people come up with ideas which are so new and different from standard assumptions, that is what they get branded as. You have pointed out great examples on that.

On the salt and pepper example, I found out an easy way to solve the labeling problem. Write a text on a piece of paper and stick it on with a cello tape. Easy way to fix damaged labels. BTW, I do run two restaurants in Bangalore and some of these ideas were born more out of necessity

Regarding your comment on pepper and salt dispensers, ” If you are a restaurant owner it is a better idea to label what is salt and what is pepper after all how many people can guess it based on the number of holes.”

Do you think a restauranteur might want to have same type of dispenser (same number of holes) to lower cost and inventory. For example, owner
has 12 tables, so restauranteur may need to buy 12 * 2 = 24 + 4 (in case some break) = 28 of one type. Instead of buying 12 + 2 = 14 of each type.
In case three of salt ones break (more chances because people use more salt), (s)he now must buy new salt ones, and his 2 pepper ones will be idle.

It is a classic case of Southwest airlines (in US) vs rest of the crowd – Southwest (SWA) had (still has) same type of fleet (I believe
all Boeings instead of some Airbus, some Boeing, and some McDonnell Douglas) so SWA could lower its inventory cost of spare parts, as well as
personnel cost because it needed only technicians for one type of aircrafts, rather than Delta/United/NWA etc. who used to have more spare parts,
and more technicians.

Just another way of thinking…your original thought is also quite reasonable

Do you know another wonderful use case of Washing Machine – Cleaning potatoes – Yes, people were
cleaning potatoes in rural China, and Haer was getting a lot of support/fix calls. It took Haer
a while to find out the so called culprit.

I disagree with the usage of word DUMBEST in the comment “understand your user very well, the smartest one and the dumbest one also “. Don’t you think so-called DUMBEST users (I should infact call them customers to cover all industries) are the ones who really drive the busiesses. Imagine, if everyone were an Einstein, then they
would build their own nuclear powered car, and no GM/Ford would have born. Dumbest is a relative term.

Some of the ideas – 3M’s post-it – were labelled as DUMBEST in 3M’s internal meetings, but became of
the most selling products.

best Mervi