Tea and technology – making them both do double service

I have long been a lover of the simplicity and benefits of green tea. My favourite type is called Jasmine Pearls – small rolled balls of green tea infused with the taste of jasmine. They appear extortionately expensive but are not – let me share why and also explain how the same trick applies to the technology we develop.

A packet of Jasmine Pearls will set you back ￡20 for a 200g bag. Far more than you would pay for a box of green tea bags, even the most upmarket. However, this tea is cheaper than the average while being far superior in quality for two reasons. Firstly, I only need to use six pearls per cup of tea, which gives enough of the delicate flavour with just hot water, no hotter than 90C. You could use fewer. The green tea leaves unwrap and sink to the bottom of the cup – no bag needed. Once you have finished your first cup you can refresh the tea leaves at least once more, sometimes twice, and have more tea. This is the usual way to drink tea in China – the second cup is usually considered the best.

Secondly, there are a huge number of pearls in a bag. I estimate it costs about two pence per cup if taking the double, or triple, cups into account. Since a box of 160 Yorkshire Tea Bags costs ￡5.39 in Tesco, or 3.3p per cup, my “expensive” Jasmine Pearls are actually very reasonable.

How does this relate to business? When we develop a new technology we want to leverage the design effort as many times as possible. As with the green tea, our latest Queen’s Award-winning weld scanning tool is also able to detect internal pipe corrosion or manufacturing defects in pipe. The valuable information gathered also has many other effects – such as providing assistance on improving a manufacturing or welding process.

So if you can make your tea or your technology do double – or more – service, you are onto a winner.