From the book called Billion Dollar Lessons by Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui, Portfolio Books, 2008. The book is subtitled What Can You Learn for the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the last 25 Years.

The sixth Deadly Strategy is Fumbling Technology is a fundamental misreading of technology trends. Every company wishes to to have a breakthrough offering because it is similar to winning the lottery, there are great rewards for the breakthrough. Similar to the lottery, many will fail. All technologies solutions should remember the Pony Express. It made a great story to move the mail faster, but it operated for a year and was shut down 2 days after the transcontinental telegraph reached Salt Lake City.

Things to learn from Motorola and Iridium – the business case is who wants it and what are they willing to pay? new technology is exciting but someone has to decide when is it a good time to pull the plug? market research is not marketing, what are the alternatives?

Fed Ex and Zapmail (faxing) ; Western union could have own AT&T; the head of IBM Thomas Watson Sr. I think there is a world market for 5 computers and Ken Olson founder of DEC – there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.

It is hard to kill a strategy once launched. There is ego, creditability, and money on the line. Often times the design is all or nothing point of view. To get the new technology up and running, money has been spent, in terms of infrastructure, operating agreements, management time has been involved, and the first user has not paid.

The big question to ask – is the market real? Do you have to do it all at once or can it be piecemeal?

There are always more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions