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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS86

it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that
others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its
adaptation to the problem you are working on.’

your idea has to be original only in its
adaptation to the problem you are
working on

boundary-examination technique The expression ‘pushing

back the boundaries’ is known to everybody. The visual exercise in
Chapter 2 of the vase, human profile and other perspectives was an
exercise in just that – examining the boundaries of a situation rather
than accepting your first interpretation of that situation as being the
only valid interpretation.

Boundary examination provides a structured technique to explore the
emerging business opportunity. Its particular value lies in its ability to
challenge what you consider to be part of the opportunity and, by
extension, what you exclude from the opportunity because you assume
it lies outside the boundary.

A classic corporate example of accepting conventional boundaries is
offered by IBM, which took the view until well into the 1970s that the
computing market would continue to be dominated by centralised
mainframe computers, with ever-increasing memories and calculating
capacities. Its efforts and resources were devoted to maintaining
leadership in the mainframe market rather than engaging at a very early
stage in the emerging personal computer market. Exploiting the
intrapreneurial skills of an autonomous business unit fuelled by an
apparently blank cheque, IBM recovered to produce its first personal
computer in 1980, gaining market leadership in the category by 1983.

The salvage industry provides a brilliant example of redefining the
boundary. Rather than frame the problem of salvaging sunken boats in
terms of lifting sunken ships to the surface, Danish entrepreneur
Charles Kroyer came up with the idea of pumping polystyrene beads
into the wrecks, thus allowing them to float to the surface.68

When Charles Dunstone launched the Carphone Warehouse in 1986,
the company was not just providing economical mobile phones, it was