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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS90

the paralysing power of preconception We saw earlier, for
example, how the Swedish furniture market pre-IKEA was conditioned
to thinking that the core market comprised the wealthy upper-middle
class. Pre-Dyson, the conventional vacuum cleaner always included a
bag with which to collect dust. The wine market before the success of
BRL Hardy focused more on the vintner’s craft than on market
potential. Dame Stephanie Shirley started to sell software into a market
which expected software to be given away free.

Until the arrival of Penguin Books’s new American CEO Peter Mayer in
the late 1970s, all UK paperback fiction books were one standard size. It
took an outsider’s challenge to create a larger size – affectionately
known as ‘B format’ – to ensure that the books achieved greater
prominence by having to be displayed away from the pack of ‘A format’
titles and that they could command a considerable price premium by
virtue of their greater physical size.

Inspired by the value curve concept created by Harvard Business
Review authors W. Chan Kim and Reneé Mauborgne, the technique of
boundary-hopping provides you with a structured technique to hop
over the conventional boundaries of how a given industry traditionally
views itself to generate truly breakthrough opportunities.70

time

substitute functional and
industries emotional appeals

to buyers

conventional
market

alternative complementary
strategic groups products and
within industries services

non-conventional
parts of the
buyer chain

Figure 3.3 Boundary-hopping into different areas