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19 Jan 2004 This week, Richard Weddle joins me for a guest update. Richard is a management consultant based in California, and he and I last wrote a piece on the music industry’s bizarre behavior in June 2003. What do the following scenes have in common? Scene 1: A conference room at Dole Headquarters in California. Around the table are senior executives of Dole, men aged between 45 and 75 who have been in the company for 10-30 years. Dole Executive: "Richard, thanks for this work on logistics and container tracking. It’s quite helpful. I don’t think there’s much more we can do to improve the business, because no one can help us grow pineapples faster! Ha ha ha." Scene 2: General Electric’s major research center in Schenectady, New York. Around the table are 9 research executives from GE, men and women between 35 and 60 who have been in the company for 5-35 years. VP of Research: "Richard, we’re different from IBM. Our patent portfolio may be as large, but it’s hard to see how we can get the value from it that IBM gets from theirs. Thanks for your help, though." Richard thinks: "They're ignoring $1 billion a year." Scene 3: Afghanistan – December 2001. Fewer than 100 non-commissioned officers of the Army's 5th Special Forces Group essentially took out the Taliban regime on their own. All bureaucratic layers were cut. They linked up with locals, fought and won riding horses and calling in precision air strikes without written approval, and used 19th century warfare with 21st-century close air support. Shift to Washington, December 2003. Despite this success in Afghanistan, elites in Washington are falling back on old ways rather than exploiting and continuing this successful model. Why? According to reporting by Robert Kaplan, the Washington elites fear that if decisions stay out of central control it makes many of them redundant. (Source WSJ 12/19/03 Think Global, Fight Local by Robert Kaplan).
These scenes have a common failure – of imagination and initiative. In each case, someone has rejected as impossible (or impractical) an approach that has demonstrated tangible benefits. Their rationale for rejection comes from experience in their company and their field, yet solutions to these problems come from outside of their company and their functional area. Raymond Damadian, the patent holder for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, noted as much in a recent interview with The New York Times: Often, however, the impossible or impractical turns out to be achievable. Consider two examples: 1. Growing Pineapples Faster It turns out that Dole really could grow pineapples faster – the action that they describe as an impossibility is quite feasible. Not only is it possible, it can be achieved through a variety of different mechanisms. Here are a few approaches: Microclimates Using Geographic Information Mapping software and applying the experience of the wine industry ($60 billion world-wide) Dole could locate profitable micro-climates that would be perfect for pineapple farming - and they might be much closer to consumers. Crop maps from micro-climate analysis could be converted to economic yield maps which show the value of each field with GPS-based sub-inch accuracy. These in turn would help create cost models to show the value of existing and candidate farm sites. Investing in Science to grow Pineapples Faster Dole could hire proven development scientists for less than a million dollars and exploit work that is estimated to revolutionize $800 million in pineapple sales. Dole's competition, DelMonte, recently introduced a "golden pineapple," hybrid fruit developed by a team of six botanists. The fruit has higher natural vitamin C, excellent sweetness, flavor and color. Dole could model professional sports teams and 'pick up key players' such as the DelMonte team of Vaeleti Tyrell; Fujie Omnes, Ann Puaala; Calvin Oda; Francisco Bareng and Pablo Espejole as 'free-agents' much like Coca-Cola did hiring chemists from Royal Crown Cola in the 1960's as it sought to convert from expensive Cane Sugar to radically cheaper High Fructose Corn Sweetener. Example 2: A Tornado in a Can
The Windhexe A recent article in the New York Times highlighted a tornado in a can – a product called the Windhexe, which brings tornado style forces to pulverize a variety of objects, from broccoli to household garbage. This ability turns out to be quite useful in a number of applications. A garbage-processing plant in Pennsylvania will go online with its Windhexe next month; the machine can turn two tons of trash into one ton of sterile powder. And in November, a North Carolina poultry processor started turning chicken parts into a high-protein powder for use in the manufacture of pet food. Frank Polifka is the inventor of the Windhexe. He’s a farmer by trade, and has no idea why the product works as it does. His partner, an engineer named Dave Winsness says: *********** Many companies label things impossible that turn out to be readily achievable, with effort, application, and a new perspective. You can hand GE $1 billion. You can win a war with 100 men. The airplane was not built by MIT engineers, but by bicycle mechanics. You can grow pineapples faster! More Information: |
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