Will you become one of the next business visionaries in 2012? If not, be careful not to be blindsided by those who do. Hudson Valley visionaries often take elements that have been around a long time and simply combine them in a new way to add greater value.
People had been shaving with straight razors for centuries. Then along came King C. Gillette, a traveling salesman who liked to invent things. At the time, the entire shaving industry viewed its equipment as being designed to last a lifetime. It was a high-quality, high-margin business.
Ӣ He envisioned a cheap, low-margin product in a world of high-quality, lifetime razors.
Ӣ Experts told Gillette that heӪd never put an edge on a cheap piece of metal.
Ӣ To most people, Gillette appeared to be a lunatic, not a visionary.
Fred Smith wrote a term paper outlining the basic idea for Federal Express. Smith dreamed of having a fleet of planes dedicated to moving packages and envisioned a hub-and-spoke system, with all packages brought to a central location, sorted and then sent back out on a dedicated fleet of planes and trucks.
Like Gillette, the business that Smith envisioned would ultimately serve a huge mass market. Gillette and Smith were people who closely observed and gained great new ideas from everything around them, from people shaving daily with straight razors to package delivery, planes, roads and trucks. They simply connected the dots and were aware that most visionary ideas come from looking outside.
The first video recorders cost $75,000. The manufacturer, Ampex, paid no attention to the mass market and gave absolutely no thought to the future and what they had in their hands. Meanwhile, emerging companies such as Sony, JVC and Matsushita began research efforts, targeting a unit to sell for less than $1,000.
VCRs eventually permeated the mass market as their cost fell to less than $100 and have been replaced by the DVR. Ampex missed the gold mine that was right in front of their eyes.
In 1971 Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois received $100,000 worth of computer time with a Xerox Sigma V mainframe and decided that the greatest value would be the storage, retrieval and searching of what was in our libraries. Project Gutenberg was launched and produced the first “e-book,” a copy of “The Declaration of Independence.”
Today Project Gutenberg has morphed into a huge industry with e-books being read on all sorts of wireless devices including our cell phones. Amazon recently announced that the third-generation Kindle is the best-selling product in Amazon”™s history and founder Jeff Bezos said the low price point of the new Kindle, $133, is the key to its success in making it available to the mass market. Everyone knows the best use of computers is to do research and process information”¦ everyone that is, except that lunatic student, Michael Hart.
You may be like Gillette or Smith and entering an established mature market with lots of well-funded competitors or like Ampex, with an innovative but expensive product. Or you may be more like Michael Hart with a different way of looking at the world. It doesn”™t matter as long as you remember that vision resides with individuals and organizations during every New Year.
Questions for discussion:
Do we have a product or service with great potential for the mass market but is currently too expensive, like the VCR of Ampex?
How can we encourage ourselves and our people to be visionaries that observe the world around them and connecting the dots to create new products or services?
Joe Murtagh is The DreamSpeaker, an international keynote speaker, meeting facilitator and business trainer. For questions or comments, Joe@TheDreamSpeaker.com, www.TheDreamSpeaker.com or call (800) 239-0058.
