[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ANAGING THE NEW VENTURE
EVERY NEW PROJECT IS AN INFANT AND INFANTS BELONG IN THE NURSERY.
Innovative efforts, especially those aimed at developing new businesses, products, or services, should normally report directly to the “executive in charge of innovation.” They should never report to line managers charged with responsibility for ongoing operations. Unfortunately, this is a common error.
The new project is an infant and will remain one for the foreseeable future, and infants belong in the nursery. The “adults,” that is, the executives in charge of existing businesses or products, will have neither time nor understanding for the infant project. The best-known practitioners of this approach are three American companies: Product & Gamble, the soap, detergent, edible oil, and food producer; Johnson & Johnson, the hygiene and health-care supplier; and 3M, a major manufacturer of industrial and consumer products. These three companies differ in the details of practice, but essentially all three have the same policy. They set up the new venture as a separate business from the beginning and put a project manager in charge.
ACTION POINT: Keep infant businesses in the nursery. Separate “infants” from “adults.”
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]ALCULATED OBSOLESCENCE
BEING THE ONE WHO MAKES YOUR PRODUCTS, PROCESS, OR SERVICE OBSOLETE IS THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT YOUR COMPETITOR FROM DOING SO.
Innovating organization spend neither time nor resources on defending yesterday. Systematic abandonment of yesterday alone can free the resources, and especially the scarcest resource of them all, capable people, for work on the new.
Your being the one who makes your product, process, or service obsolete is the only way to prevent your competitor from doing so. One major American company that has long understood and accepted this is DuPont. When nylon came out in 1938, DuPont immediately put chemists to work to invent new synthetic fibers to compete with nylon . it also began to cut nylon’s price-thus making it less attractive for would-be competitors to find a way around DuPont’s patents. This explains why DuPont is still the world’s leading synthetic-fiber maker, and why DuPont’s nylon is still in the market, and profitably so.
ACTION POINT: Cannibalize your own products before your competitor does.
The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that’s not equity, it’s just creating a society where you can’t ask anything of people.
JACQUES DELORS
When the question arose whether I, as a member of the royal family, should take part in active combat in the Falklands, there was no question in her mind, and it only took her two days to sort the issue.
PRINCE ANDREW
I just think people should find the music that helps them through the day and enjoy that. I’ve never felt like, if somebody does or doesn’t like what I’m doing, it’s a morality issue.
AMY GRANT
Regardless of the moral issue, dishonesty in advertising has proved very unprofitable.
LEO BURNETT
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My issue in the past with nudity was that these scenes had been written solely for box office draw.
NEVE CAMPBELL
What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
I believe that the issue of mental health services for our troops deploying or returning from combat is one that demands the attention of this body, if only for a few minutes today.
ROSA DELAURO
Happiness, contentment, the health and growth of the soul, depend, as men have proved over and over again, upon some simple issue, some single turning of the soul.
GEORGE A. SMITH
Clearly, border security has been the top domestic issue of the year, and rightly so. Securing our borders is an essential aspect of our national security.
RANDY NEUGEBAUER
TIA was being used by real users, working on real data – foreign data. Data where privacy is not an issue.
JOHN POINDEXTER
Gun crime is a major cause of fear and distress throughout the UK. The problem is deeply entrenched in a wide range of social and cultural factors and therefore not an isolated issue.
DIANE ABBOTT
Gayness is a non-issue.
SANDRA BERNHARD
See, to me, rock’n’roll doesn’t have any point. It’s just fun. It has a million different angles and they’re all valid. But I think rock might be a world issue.
EVAN DANDO
I extend that to the abortion issue, I extend that to the so-called gay rights issue, I think this is a freedom principle and consistent with the analysis in the economic area as well.
WILLIAM WELD
Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren’t really that important in the long term.
TED DANSON
Everything in our foreign and domestic policy is a question of issue for the American people to vote on.
JOHN DINGELL