Some of the best innovations I’ve seen don’t make people say “wow.” They make them say “duh.”
After leading more than 200 innovation projects across categories from consumer goods to tech-enabled services I’ve learned that the smartest ideas often feel obvious once you see them. They solve real problems in disarmingly simple ways.
A “Duh Idea” isn’t about launching the next moonshot or redefining a category overnight. It’s about finding the overlooked tweak, the small shift that makes you say, “Duh, why hasn’t anyone done that before?”
Too often, companies chase breakthrough ideas, the kind that require educating consumers, shifting behaviors, and spending heavily just to explain why the world needs your product. But big ideas can fail for the same reason they’re exciting: they’re too far ahead of what people already want or know how to use. Consumers aren’t already looking for this type of product, so you have to invest heavily in marketing just to help them find it, understand it, and realize why they might need it. It’s simply too new.
The “Duh Idea,” on the other hand, emerges when you look closely at how people actually use products today, and you spot the friction point hidden in plain sight.
One of my favorite examples came from working with a poultry client. Consumers love buffalo wings but hated that frozen, pre-sauced wings turned soggy in the oven. In foodservice, we noticed chefs cooked the wings first then tossed them in sauce. So we made a simple shift: we packed fully cooked wings with a sauce pouch, letting the consumer bake first and toss later. This dramatically improved crispiness and was an immediate success in retail. Operationally these wings were more efficient to produce because they didn’t have to clean the lines between flavors, they just switched out sauce pouches.
Crispier wings. Happier customers. Cleaner manufacturing lines.
That’s the magic of the “Duh Idea.” It’s not glamorous. It’s not revolutionary. But it’s incredibly valuable.
As I work with the next generation of innovators, I remind them that our job isn’t to chase “innovation” for its own sake. It’s to notice what everyone else overlooks. Because sometimes, the most powerful form of innovation starts with a single, simple reaction:
“Duh.”
