Open Tiramisu – Mine, yours, theirs, we all profit

Open Tiramisu – Mine, yours, theirs, we all profit

When I was in Japan in the 90’s, a cheese cake became extremely popular: the Italian Tiramisu. I wondered how this simple cheese cake became so popular. Every coffee shop had it. All the magazines talked about it. You could not escape from tiramisu while surfing Japanese TV channels.

I heard that something like the Japanese Confederation of Pastry Makers got together, and chose Tiramisu cheese cake to become popular. So by pulling up resources as a confederation, they used their members, made some press release efforts to promote a cheese cake, from which the confederation itself would not directly make profits.

But the rationale for the Japanese entrepreneurs was that the market segment would profit. So the members of the confederation would profit, which in turn, it would result in more contributions to the confederation, besides fulfilling its institutional role.

In this manner, the marketing efforts needed to open a new tiramisu market were shared by the confederation members. Shouldn’t that be done every time a new OS system, a platform is released in the market? Take for example Google’s Android Project for mobile phones. They're already baking their Tiramisu cheese cake.