In the late 1990s, my colleague and I were invited to write a book which eventually became “The Entrepreneurial Mindset.” I had reason to go back and revisit some of what we wrote about then, and stumbled across this example of a product that wasn’t technically feasible at the time, but which is eerily like…well, see for yourself.
In what seems like ancient history now, in the booming 1990s, my colleague and frequent co-author Ian MacMillan and I were invited by our editor at the Harvard Business School Press to put some of our ideas into book form. The theme we hit on was to take lessons from habitual entrepreneurs and apply them to corporations. Just as habitual entrepreneurs were able to start multiple businesses successfully, we reasoned that companies were going to have to learn to do that as well because the duration of any given competitive advantage was getting shorter. Companies, therefore, were going to have to be able to generate strings of advantages, replacing the old ones as they faded.
Rita McGrath | Thought Sparks
The book essentially walks a corporate entrepreneur through just about the whole journey, from identifying potentially valuable terrain to analyzing competitive responses and more. What I hadn’t thought about in years was a hypothetical example of pursuing a revolutionary configuration of a product or service by targeting non-customers. I used the example of laptop computers to illustrate – now remember, this was circa 1998 or 1999, and laptops were far from the mass market machines they subsequently became.
Rita McGrath | Thought SparksWe imagined a ‘super product’ – one that would appeal to customers who would like the functionality of the laptop but in a less expensive, more user-friendly, and more portable package. We called this hypothetical innovation a mobile intelligence device. The idea was to release creativity around a concept that could appeal to all 3 of our non-laptop-using segments without regard for what was then technically feasible.
Rita McGrath | Thought SparksAfter imagining such a product, the book then goes into detail about how our entrepreneurial firm might break through the barriers that have so far prevented such a product from being offered, in the hope of expanding the range of ideas that a potential firm might put in what we called their opportunity “inventory.”
I have to say, I had forgotten this imaginary device which, of course, 23 years later is simply taken for granted by the 85% of the earth’s 8 billion people who carry them
Rita McGrath | Thought SparksIn the Entrepreneurial Mindset, we describe any number of tools a corporate entrepreneur might use to find opportunities, design offerings, and get into the market. Too many tools, perhaps! Back in the day, the state of the art was spreadsheets and checklists. It’s still, unfortunately, spreadsheets and checklists! Many of my clients have expressed frustration that there don’t seem to be tools that specifically focus on this process – after you’ve had the idea, but before you are in the market with an innovation. We’re now on our third iteration to build such a tool. We call it the SparcHub system. Click on the link to access a demonstration.
Rita McGrath | Thought Sparks
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