WEBVTT - The Tangled Story of Instant Ramen 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.479 Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect push kid stuff. You 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:21.919 got it. 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:39.680 Fish Mumafukuando had a dream. He wanted to turn ramen 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.160 to delicious noodles, delicious noodles from something that was artisanal, 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.280 that was made and served fresh in little shops, into 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.560 a cheap, mass produced instant food. It's not a dream 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.120 of our moment, but it was a very mid twentieth 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.840 century kind of dream, which was when he was dreaming 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:00.040 this dreamy. 0:00:59.880 --> 0:01:02.760 Age of science and age of convenience and age where 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.200 where scientists could help us eat faster and more efficiently. 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.560 Yes, yes, industrial food as mid twentieth century dream. His 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:14.600 dream also, as I'll talk about in the show, a 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:19.520 very post war Japanese economic miracle kind of dream. And 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.039 so Andndo had a friend of his build him a 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:27.520 shed out back behind his house in Osaka. He bought 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:31.440 a used noodle making machine, brought it home on his bike, 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.720 set it up in the shed, and every day for 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:37.520 a year he is out there in the shed from 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.800 five in the morning until to the next morning, trying 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.400 to figure out how to make his instant ramen dream 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:48.640 come true. He is the Thomas Edison of the instant noodle. 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:50.880 Kind of seems like he read the Thomas Edison biography 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:52.080 and is taking. 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.200 It to heart. Yes, he's a businessman, he is not 0:01:55.520 --> 0:02:00.680 a chef, but this doesn't stop him. He tries adding eggs, starch, yams, 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.640 milk powder, spinach juice. Finally he gets better at making 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:09.120 the noodles, but he's still stuck on this last key step. 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.679 How do you preserve them so that they're not fresh 0:02:13.079 --> 0:02:16.279 and gonna go bad but stable. You can just put 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:18.520 him in the cabinet and then cook him up in 0:02:18.519 --> 0:02:22.160 an instant whenever you want them. And one day Ono 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:25.600 ses his wife making tempura in the kitchen in the house, 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.160 and he notices that the batter is giving off these 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:33.960 bubbles of moisture in the pan, and he realizes that 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:38.639 by frying the freshly made noodles he could dehydrate them 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:39.920 and preserve them. 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:42.359 Eureka, this is the moment. 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.800 So he flash fries his noodles, lets them cool, and 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:50.440 then he adds boiling hot water to the noodles, and voila, 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:55.280 they rehydrate and cook within minutes. He has invented instant ramen, 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:59.040 a product that human beings on planet Earth will eat 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.000 one hundred and twenty three billion, with a bee servings 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:07.960 of in twenty twenty four in the distant future. This 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.720 is the story that they tell at the Cup Noodle 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:15.440 Museum in Osaka, Japan. It's a corporate museum, a corporate 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.359 museum indeed, that has a full scale replica of the shed. 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.280 They also tell this story at the other Cup Noodle 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.600 Museum in Yokohama, where there is another full scale replica 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:32.040 of the shed. Maybe it's a replica of the replica, 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.480 one doesn't know. But the official story, this story I 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:40.400 just told you, leaves out some important details. Perhaps most importantly, 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:43.960 Momofukuwanda was not the first person to figure out that 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.080 you could preserve ramen by flash frying it. He wasn't 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.560 even the first person to patent instant ramen in Japan. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:52.600 They don't want you to know this at the Cup 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:53.880 Noodle Museum, telling. 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:55.400 You the things they don't want you to know on 0:03:55.560 --> 0:04:00.560 business history. But look, Hoo was the guy who made 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:04.800 the instant noodle great, who built pop Ramen and cup 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:12.480 noodle into global convenience food superpowers, and crucially centrally, he 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.120 was the guy who told his story better than anybody else. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:17.240 I'm Jacob Goldstein. 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.839 I'm Robert Smith. This is Business History, a show about 0:04:20.840 --> 0:04:22.640 the history of business today. 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.960 On the show, Ramen the foundational product, a foundational product 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.799 of our modern age, fuels higher education. 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:32.760 Absolutely PhDs only eat. 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:36.640 Ram only Ramen, and it has a weirdly warm place 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:40.120 in our hearts, given that it is this industrial, mid 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:41.480 century food. 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.360 Yeah, the warm place is the salt, salt. 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.240 And the hot water, a hot salty water going down 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:47.680 a lot of. 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:49.280 The salt blood pressure. They go it up. 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:53.360 When I was in elementary school and I was home 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.920 alone in the afternoons on the weekday afternoons, sometimes I'd 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:58.920 eat a pack of ramen raw. 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:01.200 You ever do that? I have done it. It is 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:02.360 It is kind of delicious. 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:05.240 The only question is do you go flavor pack or no? 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:07.200 Like how spicy you feeling? 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.640 No, no flavor pack. My best Ramen moment was when 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:12.920 I was in South Korea. I was watching baseball game 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:17.200 and instead of peanuts and cracker jack, you go down 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.480 to the convenience store at the stadium by a cup 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:24.760 of ramen at hot water and then you slip it 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:26.000 at your seat. 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.719 It is remarkably ubiquitous. You know, people talk about eating 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:34.960 it in Nigeria and in Poland, and you know, rich countries, 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:39.640 poor countries, Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas. Ramen has conquered 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:41.960 the world, right instant. Ramen has conquered the world. So 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.840 how did it happen? Why it happened largely because of 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.240 this guy, Momo Fukuwando, So let's talk about him. He 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:52.400 was born in nineteen ten in Taiwan. His name at 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:55.320 the time was go Peck Huck. I'm not sure if 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.760 I'm pronouncing that correctly. His parents died when he was 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.240 very young. He'd later say he couldn't remember their faces, 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:03.880 and he was raised by his grandparents. He spent his 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.320 childhood in their textile store doing chores, and when he 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.200 was twenty two, he went into the textile business for 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:14.840 himself with money he inherited from his parents and at 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.799 the time at the time, Taiwan was a Japanese colony. 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.880 This was the first part of the twentieth century. And 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.320 Ondo had an uncle near Osaka and that led him 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:29.280 eventually to move to Osaka. Moved to Japan and set 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.760 up a textile company there, and then World War Two started, 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:36.440 which just took his textile business out of business. But 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:39.120 one thing that will become clear about Hodo that I 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:41.359 think is really the essence of history in some ways, 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.200 is he is a hustler. He is a guy who 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.120 just keeps coming up with new businesses, and he's going 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.719 to come up with a lot before he gets to Ramen. 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:53.360 So during the war, he's selling charcoal, he's selling some 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.640 kind of optical equipment for the war effort. But then 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.360 a manager at the factory is suspected a fraud, and 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.120 apparently Ondo reports the fraud, but he ends up getting arrested. 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:06.520 That's unclear really what happened, but it is clear that 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:10.480 he got arrested and he's put in a cell and 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.360 he sees prisoners fighting over tiny servings of food, and 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:15.360 he'll later say this is part of his impetus to 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:18.680 want to create this kind of cheap, abundant food. He 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.360 gets out forty five days later, and not long after 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.720 he gets out, Japan surrenders and the war is over. 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.320 Around this time, he marries a Japanese woman named Masako, 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.720 Ando takes her name. Actually, Ando changes his first name 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.840 to Momofuku. Side note, as some people some listeners may 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.880 have been thinking already, isn't there a fancy basically Ramen 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.880 Chang food chain in America today called Momofuku. Is it 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:49.520 a coincidence, Robert, You actually talked to David Chang, right, the. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.720 Guy, and he said it was a coincidence that Momofuku 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:57.200 meant good peach, lucky peach. Yeah. Yeah, and so yeah, 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.560 he was not basing it out of MoMA fu, or 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:00.400 so he says. 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.880 Or so he says. Surely he must have known. Anyway, 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:07.320 So we're in post war Japan now there is a 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.360 profound food shortage. In fact, the US had been, you know, 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:16.320 deliberately cutting off japan supplies of food imports during the war, 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:20.800 and now after the war, the harvest in Japan is bad. 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.200 It's quite a desperate situation. People are eating peanutshells, they're 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:30.600 stealing vegetables from the fields. And Ando is this entrepreneurial 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:34.640 guy out of prison wants, you know, wants to start 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.440 a business. Also, I think genuinely wants to do something helpful. 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:40.319 So he starts getting into the food business. He finds 0:08:40.319 --> 0:08:44.360 an abandoned military base on a beach and finds a 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:48.640 bunch of demobilized soldiers with nothing to do, and opens 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:51.319 up a salt plant and the soldiers are working for 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:55.439 making salt on the beach. Another company he starts extracts 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.120 the marrow from discarded animal bones to make some kind 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:05.200 of nutrition supplement. And around this time a couple things 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:08.680 come together to plant the seeds of the big idea, 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:13.960 the Ramen, the instant ramen idea in his mind. One 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.720 the US is occupying Japan, and the US is bringing 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.840 food from the US to help stave off famine. In particular, 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.920 the US is bringing in surplus wheat. It's a classic 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:27.880 American move. 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:31.560 Yeah, because we have wheat farmers, and it's a great 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.400 way to take our bounty and move it to another place, 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:36.479 even if they don't traditionally eat much wheat. 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:40.240 Right, And so they had eaten some bread in Japan, 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:43.560 and before the Portuguese had brought bread, they didn't eat much. 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:47.680 But the Americans they're bringing in this flour and turning 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.720 it into white bread, which is not a normal thing 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.360 in a Japanese diet. And there are these like pr 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.160 vans going around, which I think means like the vans 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.360 with the big speaker on top driving around being like 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:01.880 America is giving you bread, you know, and they're putting 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:03.760 it in school lunches and this sort of thing. 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:08.439 You're hungry, eat some bread. Bread is good, America good. 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.839 That's the gist. Yeah, so they're trying to get people 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:16.080 to eat the bread. Ondo knows about this. And there's 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.199 a moment when this is happening that is like a 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:22.480 key moment according to him, where he's walking by a 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.440 train station and he sees this long line of people 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.800 and they look haggard, you know, their clothes are worn 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:35.120 and they're kind of downcast, and it's this long line. 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.040 It's like, what is this line? And he looks at 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:39.920 the front of the line and he sees that the 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:44.280 people are waiting to get a bowl of ramen noodle's 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:48.520 hot broth. It just looks so good and so satisfying 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:52.920 you would wait a long time for it. And Ondo thinks, 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.560 this is ridiculous, Like we're trying to talk people into 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:01.320 eating bread. This food people basically don't want. That is 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:05.199 not a Japanese food. We should be turning that weat 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:07.920 into ramen, this food that people are lining up around 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:08.680 the block for. 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.319 Which is a very smart business thing to notice. There's 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:13.400 a huge demand for something that has a low supply. 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.800 There's this large supply of bread that no one wants. 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:17.600 I mean, it's great. 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:22.960 So there is this sort of corporate autobiography of Ondo 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:27.079 that talks about this moment, and he says he actually 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.679 goes to a guy from the Ministry of Health with 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:32.360 this idea, turn the weed into ramen. But he says 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:33.240 there was a problem. 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:36.800 At the time, however, ramen and Japanese udon were solely 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.040 the domain of small scale businesses. There was no pipeline 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:44.240 connecting us flower surpluses with the structures necessary to produce 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:49.000 and distribute noodles. The lack of adequate manufacturing facilities amounted 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:49.880 to a bottleneck. 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.800 A bottleneck one of the things we often see in 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:53.800 mystery of business. 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:55.679 And you can make a lot of money if you 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.160 figure out a way to solve the bottleneck. 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:00.760 We need a printing press, but for ramen noodles, which 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.400 is what he's gonna do. Yeah, I mean, ramen at 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:07.280 this time is a craft product. I actually thought of 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:09.960 cars before Henry Ford came along. You know, it's made 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.720 in small batches, it's made fresh. It's the kind of 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.360 thing we sort of fetishized today, like ooh, small batch. 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:17.360 That sounds nice, but you're not going to feed a 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:21.880 hungry nation with it. You just can't turn these shiploads 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.800 a wheat into ramen in this way. So Hondo has 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:28.760 this idea, and maybe he would have solved this problem 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:33.960 right away, but for the fact that he got arrested again, Wow, criminal, 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.560 This time it was for tax evasion. For what it's 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.520 worth Onndo's story is that it was a misunderstanding about 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:44.360 a scholarship program he started for his workers. What really happened, 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.120 I don't know, but again it's clear that he was arrested, 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:49.640 his assets were seized, and this time he spent two 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.160 years in prison some time. 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:55.320 Yeah, that's a lot of time to think about, Robin. 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:58.600 And you don't even have insant ramen to eat while 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:00.520 you're inventcing because it hasn't been invented yet. So he 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:04.440 gets out and now he is ready to make his 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:08.000 big ramen breakthrough. After he runs a credit union for 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.560 six years until it fails and goes bankrupt. He tries 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:13.079 a lot of things that don't work. It's what I'm 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:14.000 saying now. 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.040 You know what I have to say. This makes me 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.240 love him, not that he was some lifelong chef who 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:21.679 wanted to perfect this culinary thing but he's a guy 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:23.960 who tried a bunch of things. He's just looking for 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:24.520 a way through. 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.839 He just keeps working at it. Okay, now he's ready, Yeah, 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.000 for going out in the shed in the backyard, supposedly 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:35.080 having the breakthrough. This is the late fifties. By nineteen 0:13:35.120 --> 0:13:37.199 fifty eight, he figures it out. Robert Smith, let's go 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:38.560 to the official corporate narrative. 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:40.480 Sure you can read this on a big wall at 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:44.800 the cup Noodle Museum. On August twenty fifth, nineteen fifty eight, 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:49.040 chicken ramen, the world's first instant noodles, was launched. Since 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.560 chicken ramen, a food ready to eat in just two 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.200 minutes after adding hot water, was a product inconceivable under 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:59.760 the conventional wisdom of the times, it was dubbed magic ramen. 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.000 They may have dubbed the noodles magic ramen. 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.280 Nobody else called it magic ramen. They called it magic ramen. 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.320 Yes, the thing that is clear from the historical record, 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:14.400 these noodles were not in conceivable under the conventional wisdom 0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.360 of the time. In fact, someone else seems to have 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:23.200 conceived them before. Momafuguando, Robert, We've got more history, this time, 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.560 not from an official corporate history, but from the book 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:30.000 The Untold History of Ramen by historian named George. 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:34.400 Sult, A much smaller company had already released an identical 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:39.400 product in nineteen fifty five called Flavored Chinese Noodles, three 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.040 years before the release of Chicken Ramen, but the company 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.520 was forced to halt production after a few months due 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:45.520 to weak sales. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:50.280 Interesting, I turned out to exhibit B a Harvard Business 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:55.600 School case study entitled Momofukuando and the Globalization of Noodles, 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.360 which points out that flash frying noodles to preserve them 0:14:59.960 --> 0:15:02.200 was a technique that had been used since the early 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.280 twentieth century in. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:05.800 Taiwan, where he's from. 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:10.360 Where he's from, they called this noodle dish g c 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.320 yan jen pa mispronouncing. But I want to say it 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:15.920 so I can quote directly from the Harvard Business schal 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:21.000 case study which says Taiwanese families shipped packages of g 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:25.360 siman to their relatives living in Japan when the country 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:31.920 experienced post war food shortages. It seems like Momofuku Ando 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:36.120 did not invent instant ramen. Even if he did go 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:38.360 to the shack, he wasn't the first guy to figure 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:38.720 it out. 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:40.800 You know. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.120 If there's one thing I've learned during this show, it's 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.360 that you know, invention is fine. Invention's great. I'm glad 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.600 there are inventors out there, but ideas are plentiful and 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:50.960 execution is rare. 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.760 Yes, when we did that story about Edison and the movies, 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:57.720 we talked about the similar theme. Right. Edison basically did 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.080 not invent the movies, but he got credit leased in 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.160 America for inventing the movies. And when we talked about that, 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:10.080 we talked about Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economists of the 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:12.640 guy who came up with the term creative struction, which 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:16.400 they love today in Silicon Valley, and he wrote beautifully 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.640 about the difference between inventors and entrepreneurs, which is what 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:21.360 we're talking about here. 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:23.480 So so give us that as long as they are 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:28.000 not carried into practice, inventions are economically irrelevant. And to 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.280 carry any improvement into effect is a task entirely different 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.720 from the inventing of it, and a task moreover requiring 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:38.920 entirely different kinds of aptitudes. It is therefore not advisable, 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.640 and it may be downright misleading to stress the element 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:46.280 of inventions as much as many writers do or podcasts do. Yeah, 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:46.560 we do. 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:49.800 That's us. We are stressing it too much because the 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:53.800 inventor is so fun, right, Like, yes, execution is what matters, 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:56.960 but like the guy in the shed, try to try 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:58.080 to come up with how to do it. 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.400 That is delightful. I think we like the lesson that 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:04.600 anyone can be struck by lightning. The light bulb goes off, 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.600 You come up with an idea and change the world. 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.440 If the real story is now you have to actually 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:14.600 work hard and do all the hard implementation things to 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.199 change the world. Well, that's not as much fun. That's 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.000 just a job, this drudgery. 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:20.880 And I used to think, I mean Edison, the guy 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:23.639 who more than anybody created the inventor narrative, you know, 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.560 is famously has one percent inspiration ninety nine percent perspiration. 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:29.359 And I used to think that was like what you 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.439 need to get to the invention. But no, it's what 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:36.720 you need after the invention to get to business success. 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:39.440 Like once you have the idea, all of the work 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:42.040 is before you. And I used to think that the 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:44.960 myth of the inventor was an American thing or a 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:49.119 Silicon valley thing. But this story suggests that no, it 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:53.240 is in fact a global human thing. We love an 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:59.240 origin story, we love an inventor, and so Ando was 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.960 apparently not the inventor creating magic noodles out of one 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:10.960 percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent cooking oil. 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.879 I know that is one hundred and one peralt and 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:15.359 you got. 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:16.480 You've got the secret recipe. 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.879 But he was. He was a great entrepreneur. He was 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:24.440 the guy who brought instant ramen to the world, which 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:49.920 we will talk about after the break. Mama fuku Ono's 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:53.679 first instant ramen. It does seem like it was good ramen. 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:58.560 It's called chicken ramen because he actually cooked in some 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.560 way cooked the noodles in chicken broth before he flashed 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:01.959 fried there. 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:03.280 Oh, the flavor was big. 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.760 Flavor was fried right in and so there was no 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:07.480 flavor packet. 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:07.960 Initially. 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.720 You just add the hot water and you and there 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:12.520 was in the block of noodle. It was a block 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.560 of noodles like now in a top ramen pack but 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:17.879 it had a little divot on top, and the idea 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:20.000 was you crack an egg into that divot and then 0:19:20.040 --> 0:19:22.000 you pour the hot water over the whole thing, and 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.480 the egg kind of poaches while the noodle cooks. 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:25.000 I like that. 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:28.800 Bring that one back. Yeah. He calls his ramen company 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.760 Nissin Foods. The official story is that the new name 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:38.280 symbolizes his desire to create a rich flavor purely each day, 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:43.639 because Nietzsche means day and chin means pure. Now, we 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:47.560 could talk about Hondo making instant ramen in his house 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.120 with his family, hundreds of packs a day. We could 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.160 talk about him putting on a suit and doing a 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.919 demo at a fancy department store in Tokyo, calling out 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.520 to passers by. Those things really happened. But you know 0:19:57.560 --> 0:19:58.919 what I want to talk about. I want to talk 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:04.160 about Momofuku's real edison move suing all his rivals. 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:05.280 Oh so good. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:09.439 First, he tries to trademark the chicken ramen name in 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.120 late nineteen fifty nine and finds they're already thirteen other 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:16.439 companies making a similar product under that name. Goes to 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.879 court wins exclusive rights to the name. Next problem, somebody 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:25.520 else has already patented his flash frying method. Another guy 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.400 who was born in Taiwan actually and had been running 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:30.879 a noodle shop in Japan, for years by that point, 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:34.440 and so Ando negotiates with the guy winds up buying 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.159 the patent. And according to that HBS case study, the 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:43.800 contract apparently included a provision not to talk publicly about 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.480 any relationship to Momofuku's Chicken. 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:47.960 Ram He's already building up the myth. 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:49.800 He's already building up the myth. First rule of buying 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:53.560 up intellectual property rights. Don't talk about buying up intellectual 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:57.440 property rights. But I guess somehow the world leaked anyways, 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.520 because a newspaper asked Ando about this deal. Here's what 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:02.960 he said. 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.560 I am not thinking about monopolizing the instant Ramen business. 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:08.840 I want to authorize the use of the patent by 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:12.199 companies with excellent facilities and technology. If it could we 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.320 used to prevent surplus production and sharp price drops. I 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:19.159 believe that the industry can be stabilized. You're saying, I 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:21.639 want to share the miracle that is instant Ramen. 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:26.399 This sounds like JP Morgan to me. You know, monopolies 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:28.440 in nineteen hundred, why do we have all these steel 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:31.960 companies competing with each other and making a chaotic market. 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:34.760 Wouldn't it be much better if one steel company sold 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:36.600 all the steel in an orderly fashion. 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:38.040 I'm not hitting for the bunny. I mean it to 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:40.080 prevent surplus production of ramen. 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:46.960 So Ando starts threatening rivals with patent violation lawsuits, reaches 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:51.880 agreements with twenty companies to share patent rights in exchange 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:53.679 for a portion of their revenues. They're all kind of 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:56.840 banding together. Some of the other ramen companies, they're a 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:00.200 lot by this point, hold out and form their own cartels. 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.440 And in the end the government gets involved and broker's 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:06.240 a deal. Are they fighting in the streets, like do 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:07.800 they go and hitting each other over the head with 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:08.720 drive noodles? 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:10.440 They go to the factory and break all the news 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:11.200 in the little pieces. 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.200 In the end, the government gets involved, broke as a deal, 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:18.399 and there there wind up being three ramen cartels. Onto is, 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:19.920 you know, kind of at the center of one of them. 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:22.520 This is important. There is a bigger idea here. This 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:25.960 is a Japanese economic miracle idea. Right these decades, the 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:31.240