Making millions thinking like a child

Taking a toddler’s approach

In 1943, Edwin Land, an American physicist, was on holiday and took a photo of his three- year- old daughter. She asked why she couldn’t see it straight away. It was a good question: Why couldn’t she?

“As I walked around the charming town, I undertook the task of solving the puzzle she had set me,” he later recalled. “Within an hour, the camera, the film and the physical chemistry became so clear to me.”

The Polaroid instant camera was born and went on to become one of the most iconic consumer products of the 20th century.

Sometimes, questions from a three-year-old can be more perceptive than those from adults. Or that, at least, is the view of Paul Lindley, founder of Ella’s Kitchen, one of Britain’s most successful consumer brands. Its brightly coloured pouches of puréed fruit Baby Brekkie are a staple in households.

The secret of his success — last year, Ella’s Kitchen had a turnover of more than £80 million ($134 million) — was, he says, “thinking like a toddler,” rather than a businessman. “If we just looked at the world through their eyes occasionally, then we would question the routine that we are in, and we’d question some of the answers as to why that routine is there.”

Now he has written a book, Little Wins: The Huge Power of Thinking Like a Toddler, which, as well as offering advice to wannabe entrepreneurs, is also an interesting account of how Ella’s Kitchen became a hit.

Lindley, aged 50, was a U.K. director of Nickelodeon, the children’s TV channel. He had no experience in the food industry nor in dealing with Britain’s notoriously tough supermarkets.

His idea for a baby food brand was born out of trying to get his own daughter, Ella, to eat healthily. But was he brave enough to quit a well- paid, stable job? “It’s a mouthful you either have to swallow or spit out. The option you don’t have is to chew it endlessly. Just as food eventually loses its taste, ideas can go mushy, too.”

Lindley had seen food pouches sold in a French supermarket, but they were aimed at adults and mostly contained mayonnaises and salad dressing. He realized children could hold onto the pouches and feed themselves, making feeding on the go much easier than with a jar and spoon.

The other was branding. He decided everything about t he company should be aimed at the ultimate enduser: babies and toddlers, not just the parents buying the food. So the packaging was brightly coloured, covered in cartoon- style drawings and was named after his daughter.

“Play, in an adult world, is something we tend to denigrate as just for children,” he says. “But what if we said learning was only for children?”

It’s not just about pingpong tables and beanbags in an office — though there is some of that at Ella’s Barn, the headquarters. There is Lego to encourage workers to play, and handprints on the walls of everyone who has worked there.

“One of our values is being childlike. And everyone in our team is recruited, promoted and rewarded bonuses based on how well they live those values. So everyone has to show they are childlike.”