Page 171 - Harnessing the Strengths

154 ■ Servant-Leadership in the Intercultural Practice

The key question was: What do we do? Do we make some-
thing we can and want to make, but for which there is not
yet a market? Or do we take the requests and wishes of the
client as a starting point and feed this into our R&D and
product planning functions? Neither of the extreme focuses
leads to a sustainable innovation.
In the past, the pure “push of technology” had worked in
the internally controlled societies of Great Britain, the Neth-
erlands, and the United States. A purely client-driven focus,
on the other side, had worked well in externally oriented cul-
tures such as Japan and other Asian countries. However, the
rapid internationalization process of the seventies brought
an end to the success of the technology push tactic. The push
strategy only works in situations of little competition. With
increased competition, this strategy often leads to fantastic
products ending up in ultra-niche markets of “early adopt-
ers” with high disposable incomes, but relatively few with
clients. Under the push strategy, many American-designed
and -produced consumer electronics were quickly put out of
business by the Japanese competition.
A second, excellent example is the way the Philips orga-
nization had always struggled with the marketing of prod-
ucts such as CDs and DVDs. The cynics used to say, “Philips
creates and Sony sells.” That Sony could “sell” had to do
with the fact that the Japanese tend to be oriented completely
from the clients’ point of view. Their extreme market-pull
approach has its limits too, because the clients often have no
idea as to what they want or what is possible.
A different reaction to this dilemma became clear in
the different leadership styles of the successive helmsmen
at Philips. After a period of time with internally oriented
Timmer as leader, Boonstra, an externally oriented market-
ing man, came along. Finally, Philips had both technology