Breakthrough solutions are much more valuable than seeking incremental improvements in operations. Combine those breakthroughs with powerful external forces, and the growth benefits can be like being propelled into space aboard a powerful rocket.
Many businesses see their preferred ways of operating as unchangeable best ways to do something. This attitude is like having a windmill that is fixed to face in only one direction. When the wind blows in just that direction, the windmill generates lots of energy. When the wind blows in any other direction, the windmill is idle.
The inventor who figured out how to make a windmill that turned on its axis so it would always be facing the wind came up with a breakthrough solution for harnessing wasted power. Such a windmill generates maximum energy over all 360 degrees of the compass, rather than only over a range of 15 degrees or so. As a result, with a wind blowing randomly from all directions, it creates 20 times more power than a fixed windmill. The beauty of such a solution is that it makes a virtue of uncertainty rather than taking the risk of a narrow view of where the wind will come from in the future.
A breakthrough solution for making use of external influences can also provide 20 times or more benefit from the same or similar level of resources (such as a pivoting windmill) than when applying the usual or 100 percent solution (a fixed-facing windmill).
It can also be any way to do something 20 times faster to get the same benefit from the same or similar level of resources. A pivoting windmill also exemplifies this feature because it will generate the same amount of power as the fixed-facing windmill in less than 5 percent of the time in locations where the wind blows randomly from all directions.
In some situations you can have breakthrough solutions that provide improved methods and increased speed simultaneously for a combined 40,000 percent benefits (2,000 percent times 2,000 percent equals 40,000 percent). This circumstance is most likely to occur when having the benefits sooner is worth vastly more than having the same benefits stretched out over time. It occurs routinely when the benefits of one breakthrough solution produce skill, time, and resources to add other breakthrough solutions in related, commplementary areas of practice. This transferred advantage means that time and resources are constantly being used more efficiently across the whole organization.
When irresistible forces are in play, the benefits are likely to boom way beyond the 2,000 percent level for breakthrough solutions because those forces create enormous momentum for the first organization that responds appropriately, leaving other organizations in the dust.
Consider Amazon.com and its explosive entry into selling books and music on the Internet. Shortly after going public inception and within months of being started, the company had achieved a market capitalization for its stock that was far larger than that of all its conventional competitors combined.
As a result, the company was able to pay for even faster development of its position on the Internet, which made its future growth and profit potential expand much sooner as well. While it was still losing money on each book sold, Amazon.com stock sold for than 20 times the total price of each book the company sold.
This high stock price was used indirectly to allow the company access to vast resources for the book business and to enter other electronic commerce markets. Now that's stallbusting your way to a breakthrough solution involving irresistible forces!
Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
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