Okay, okay, I admit it. Sometimes my wife, Lydia, throws in a small bag of chocolate chips for an added glucose kick. (Hey, it’s only one day a week.)

But one thing is clear: Whipping up a batch of pancakes is messy and time-consuming. And cleanup is definitely no fun: frying pans, spatulas, mixing bowls, plates and countertops slathered in a confluence of sticky batter, sugar and syrup. So, it’s understandable why our breakfast tradition is relegated to one day a week.

But this barrier might soon be eliminated with the emergence of the Batter Blaster: an organic pancake-and-waffle mix in a pressurized can with a point-and-shoot nozzle. With minimal prep-time and cleanup, cooking pancakes is quick and easy.

Want proof of the Batter Blaster’s speed and convenience?

The product was used to cook 76,382 pancakes in eight hours, setting a Guinness World Record. More convincingly, the Batter Blaster is available in 13,000 outlets nationwide, including Costco and Whole Foods Market, with 2009 revenue expected to reach $19.5 million.

Batter Blaster’s success is based on a simple, two-step formula:

1. Identify a common drawback or fear surrounding your product or service. This is the condition driving your customer’s felt need.
2. Develop a solution that eliminates or reduces this obstacle. In other words, satisfy your customer’s felt need.

Recall that Flip simplified the video camera by eliminating all the doodads and gizmos that prevents people from using a camcorder. The pocket-sized, point-and-shoot Flip now dominates the $2.4 billion-a-year camcorder industry.

Likewise, Batter Blaster is doing the same with pancakes.

So how might you simplify your product or service?

But for all it’s computational power, the brain’s decision making machinery is amazingly fragile.

Working memory has a finite capacity. According to psychologist George Miller, the conscious brain can juggle only seven pieces of data at any one moment. Heaping on additional information quickly capsizes decision making.

Neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer observes, “Choices that seem straightforward – like choosing a jam in the supermarket – can overwhelm the prefrontal cortex. It gets intimidated by all the jam data. And that’s when bad decisions are made.”

Uncertainty is the costly side-effect of overwhelming your customers with too many choices. Generally speaking, the more options customers have at their fingertips, the more indecisive they’ll become. And complexity often creates the desire for simplicity.

Simplicity is the strategy used to counteract complex purchases.

Consider the emergence of the Flip Camcorder. The Flip eliminated all the doodads and gizmos that prevents us from using – or otherwise buying – a camcorder: Confusing menu options. Bulky size and shape. Cords and recording tapes.

On the flip side (pun fully intended) take a look at the simplicity that the Flip camcorder offers:

• Point-and-shoot with the press of a button
• Pocket-sized shape
• Built-in hard disc and USB adapter
• Runs on two AA batteries
• Low-price, starting at $149.99

Sounds pretty east-to-use, huh? It’s no coincidence that by simplifying the video camcorder, Flip quickly became the top-seller in the $2.4 billion-a-year camcorder industry.

So how might you simplify your product or service to dominate your market?