“Business innovation” and use of a cannonball approach

Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great By Choice”

In the “Fire Bullets” Then “Cannonballs” approach lets try to understand about cannonballs.

Once the incremental innovations are tested by firing “bullets” and they hit their targets , the “cannonballs” need to be fired.

Cannonballs can be 1) Calibrated and 2) Un-Calibrated

A calibrated cannonball has confirmation based on empirical validation and are more likely to be successful.

An un-calibrated cannonball can lead to calamity because they are fired without any experience based confirmation.

Think of Pacific SouthWest Airlines’s demise and their FLy-Drive-Sleep was an un-calibrated cannonball that eventually led to the demise of PSA.