The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 181-182

182 With many companies we start, we don't even do the figures in advance. We just feel there's room in the market...We try to make the figures work out after the event. Richard Branson/Virgin Group.

 

The differences, mostly, lie at the edge--sophisticated products and services on which the rest of us piggyback our way to relative success. Breakthrough products depend, in turn, on an astonishingly small number of people. Providing a climate that produces great microbiologists, aerospace engineers, and architects--and then offers an entrepreneurial infrastructure that turns their work into gold--it essential.

 

Are you regenerating? Are you dealing with new things? When you find yourself in a new environment, do you come up with a fundamentally different approach? That's the test. When you flunk, you leave. Jack Welch/CEO GE

 

 As I see it, business problem No. 1 is that too many still follow the reluctant mutator strategy--e.g., IBM's continuing and ultimately futile efforts to keep an iron grip on its major customers in a computational world gone bonkers.

 

"Advantageous mutations occur so rarely that...it may be helpful to arrange for an increased mutation rate"