Page 47 - Like No Business I Know

Reformulation

“Done.”
“Done?” Cary was irrepressible. “It took me two years to get a
stable compound!”
“You must forgive my partner,” said Phil hastily. “He has been
under a lot of stress.”
The reformulator frowned.
“This is how it works. You make something. Suddenly nobody
wants it. Take this place, Starlite Lanes. Used to be thousands of
bowling alleys in the country. Demographic aged, demand dropped,
most of them fell on hard times. Game hasn’t changed, but now it’s a
money-maker again. Why? Reformulated to appeal to a younger
crowd: rock music, lights flashing like a pinball machine, back wall
lined with video games, junk food they crave, a place to get stoned
and trip out. World War Two ended: gigantic plants cranking out
nitrates for munitions faced shutdown. What to do? Reformulate as
fertilizer, cover the world in the stuff. Even bigger business. Nuclear
reactors generating waste, politically impossible to dispose of.
Solution: reformulate as depleted uranium for bunker-busting bombs,
nobody cares about radiation from that. Case after case. Poisons
turned into medical and beauty treatments. Food dyes quickly
repackaged as rat poison. All reformulation. Same product, different
market. Got it?”
Cary’s mouth hung open.
“Yes, right, we understand.” said Phil.
“But you people can’t shift gears mentally. You can’t give up your
self-imposed link between form and function. You need me to break
it and reformulate it. Here it is: listen up. Forget Urospector 3.0 and
law enforcement. Your market is teenage boys. Your product is
Quizzy-Wizzy. Kids will buy this once they see what fun it is, testing
themselves in private and pulling pranks on others in school toilets.
The ambiguity of test results allows them to have it both ways:
plausible deniability of drug use or pretense to it after drinking a
carbonated beverage. Your user manual will convert to a series of
tricks and games the purchaser can play. It has the potential to sell a
million units the first year.”
Phil sat stunned, grasping the concept several seconds ahead of the
literal-minded chemist.

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