Adopted from Simon Sinek’s book titled “The Infinite Game”
WHY as coined by Simon in his book “Start With Why” is something that defines us in terms of our values and beliefs.A WHY is formed by connecting the dots from the past.
A JUST CAUSE on the other hand is a vision for the future that is bigger than ourselves.
Think of WHY as a the foundation of our house and JUST CAUSE as the futuristic model of the house.
Thus knowing our WHY can help us better in defining a JUST CAUSE.
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great By Choice”
The iPod story illustrated a point that though a big successful venture can look like a single step creative breakthrough but in reality it is a multi step iterative process based on empirical validation than visionary genius.
Apple’s revival via the iPod bears testimony to the combination of “fanatic disciple” & “empirical creativity”.
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great By Choice”
“Fire Bullets” Then “Cannonballs” approach mentioned in his book needs firing cannonballs when the bullets hit the incremental innovation targets.
10X companies for e.g. SWA ideally fire calibrated cannonballs out of empirical validation and hence have achieved unparalleled success.
But history is witness to the fact that even SWA have fired “un-calibrated cannonballs” for e.g. acquisition of Muse Air in 1980’s.The only difference is that these companies have the needed discipline to learn from their mistakes and hence have been able to turn around from failures.
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.
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great By Choice”.
Innovative high performing companies adopt a “Fire Bullets” then “cannonball” approach to outwit their rivals in the infinite game of business.In such an approach starting from firing bullets to test out the incremental innovation is imperative to scale up and later fire cannonballs.
The following are the three components of a “bullet”
Once these steps are validated and “bullets” fired hit their targets it should give a fair enough indication to scale up and fire “cannonballs”
After reaching an “innovation threshold” this is the approach that explains the success of 10X or high performing companies rather than big leap innovations and predictive genius.
“Fire Bullets” Then “CannonBalls” implying gradually scaling up innovations starting from a small scale(bullets).When these innovations hit their targets then only plan on launching the cannonballs.
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great By Choice”
Watch out this space for more on this approach.
When we marry operating excellence with innovation it multiplies the value of creativity and it turn amplifies growth of a 10x high performing organization
Thus the greatest challenge is to blend creative intensity with relentless discipline
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great by Choice”
Early 1973 Intel adopted the motto “Intel delivers” not “Intel innovates”
This bears ample testimony to the fact that in any industry beyond an “innovation threshold” what matters is fanatical discipline to keep playing the infinite game
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book titled “Great by Choice”
Every business environment be it biotechnology , medical devices , airlines , insurance etc. has an “innovation threshold”
For airlines it is low & biotechnology driven by patents is high
To compete in an industry all big players have to operate beyond this threshold.The top performing ones are those who innovate judiciously without getting burnt out
Adopted from Jim Collins’s book “Great by choice”
Victorinox is the iconic manufacturer of Swiss Army knives.
Their business model hit a huge low when after 9/11 the US government banned the presence of knives in flight luggage.
In spite of this they did not lay off people and in turn came up with new innovations and products to make up for the loss due to sale of Swiss Army knives.
Source – moneyinc.om
Read more about unique characteristics of this company from the following link
https://moneyinc.com/victorinox-watches/