Dogfooding…what’s that? On a leisurely Sunday afternoon earlier this week, I bumped onto this new term being used in the ‘Entrepreneur World’ these days: Dogfooding.
According to Laura Kelly, writing in the Shop Talk column, of the Sunday New York Times Business Section, dogfooding is “the practice in which tech workers use their own product consistently to see how well it works and where improvements can be made.”
Software engineers and makers of all kinds are hungry for excellence. Dogs are hungry for dog food. Craftspeople, folks who make or invent things, entrepreneurs of all types are hungry for food to feed their hungry for the ‘better, faster, smarter.’ In this world of tech, dogfooding means consistently using a product you built, just as the eventual user might, to figure out what works, what needs to be fixed, where improvements can be made.
This week as we ‘partner up’ with the Bucknell Small Business Development Center to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week we encourage, and we salute our valley’s entrepreneurial makers and risk takers. The notion of dogfooding or perfecting a product by using it yourself, is particularly appealing for innovations in baking (they get to eat their mistakes) but I can only imagine the amount of fortitude and patience that it takes for IT experts or process flow improvements.
You may be interested in knowing that 84% of your fellow Chamber members are small businesses, with over half of these being micro-businesses of five employees or less. Among these so-called micro-businesses nearly all are developmental, experimental, or entrepreneurial in nature. Here in the Greater Susquehanna entrepreneurism is a big deal.
Thank you to our crafters, makers, and risk takers. Thank you to Steve and his entire crew at the Small Business Development Center for keeping the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ alive, well, and growing in our backyards.
Our best days lie just ahead…
Note: do you have a new idea, an innovation, or a start-up, that you’re bursting at the seams to tell us about?
If so, we’re looking for you to sign up at https://www.1millioncups.com/susquehanna
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