Keep an eye out for me on Dragons' Den, where I hope to demonstrate my latest invention, the wind-powered fan. It is compact, tactile and comes in a range of colours. I only hope there is a breeze blowing through the Den.

Before I put my fan onto the market, I must make a strategic decision: do I go for a cheap, mass-produced product, or should I shell out more in manufacturing costs and aim for the designer gadget market? In short, do I aim for 'stack 'em high and sell 'em low' stores, or do I raise my sights and aim to produce a must-have accessory, to be seen in the handbag of every supermodel?

It is a difficult choice to make. Obviously I would sell more of the cheaper version, but the designer version would sell for five times the price of the mass produced fan. To make matters even more complicated, my market research indicates that I would sell approximately five times more of the cheaper fan than the designer one, so either choice would generate roughly the same level of revenue.

Both options are equally tempting and I can't decide which route to go down. To help me make a decision, I journey way back in time to the age of fables, and I call in Buridan's Ass.

Buridan's Ass is the name given to a method of decision making where two (or more) equally appealing choices are on offer. The ass in the fable was trying to choose between two similarly tempting bales of hay. It just couldn't make up its mind which would be the better option and in the end its indecision proved costly; it starved to death.

To make a decision using the Buridan's Ass method, we must remove all of the positive factors from the equation, and look only at the negatives. As both of my options with the fan are, like those bales of hay, equally attractive, this is a logical way of coming to a decision. Here are the negative aspects of my fan.

Mass-produced Fan
Low prestige. Considered 'tacky'.
Quality concerns
Lumbered with a lot of surplus stock if it fails to sell

Designer Fan
More expensive to produce
Niche market means a bigger risk

This new information doesn't make my decision easy, but at least there are now clear distinctions between the two products, and in the end I would opt to put the designer fan into production. Even though this is a greater risk than the cheaper option, the consequences of failure are less severe, and there is a redeeming feature.

If the designer brand failed to sell, then at least I could recoup some of my money by selling off the stock at a reduced price. The mass produced version would already be selling at a rock-bottom price, and I would not be able to recoup anything from the huge amount of stock I would be left with.

The Buridan's Ass method is a useful way to choose between options that offer similar benefits. While the positive aspects of my options were equally attractive, when I switched views and looked at what was unattractive about each option, a clear preference emerged.