Page 89 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

76 grow from within

but simply imposing some discipline during the early stages
of concept development. It is in these early stages, before a
commitment has been made to invest significant resources, that
rigorous business thinking can have the most impact. In many
cases, teams address business issues like channel strategy, sup-
ply chain, payment systems, and so on late in the process, after
much of the product or service has already been determined.
By then, it can be too late to take advantage of truly innovative
business design concepts.
Like product development, business design should be an
iterative process. In the early stages, you should explore many
paths without investing significant resources. Avoid eliminat-
ing any paths too early, as they might lead to truly exciting vis-
tas. The easyJet’s ultra-low-cost model started by asking
whether an airline could charge a nearly trivial amount for an
airline ticket, say $19. No traditional airline business model
could have supported such a fare. After devising aggressive in-
air advertising concepts, such as promotions on the back of
every seat and video advertisements, the company was able to
achieve what at first appeared ridiculous.
Business system design begins with creative thinking, con-
sidering all aspects of a complete business system relative to
your new business concept. As you collect new information and
learn what will and will not work, the business system should
emerge. You won’t have made all of the business design deci-
sions up front. The point is that you’ll have considered most of
the right business-related questions early on to optimize your
project’s outcome. In the outline that follows (Table 2-1), we offer
a simple approach to initiating the business design process. We
then provide a series of questions that you can use to challenge
your team to take a fresh look at any business system.
Our process is intended to be simple. Your team might
accomplish the first five steps in a single day, or you might