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211 : THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING STRONG IDEAS

20 per cent time It is interesting to note that leading internet search
firm Google has emulated 3M’s bootlegging rule. The company’s
proposal to extend into e-mail with its Gmail service stemmed from a
Google engineer whose attention was caught by a customer complaint
about existing e-mail services. The engineer considered that it might be
a good ‘20 per cent time’ project, matching Google’s requirement that a
day a week is spent on projects which interest staff, unrelated to their
day job.17

challenging convention for competitive
advantage The increased quality of ideas produced by the

increased alternatives described above is likely to include challenges to
existing concepts of products and services. These challenges may
suggest previously unthought-of market opportunities.

It is easy for products and services to become prisoners of their
underlying concept. The core competencies which define an
organisation can quickly become the ‘core rigidities’ which make it
vulnerable to new competition launching developments outside its
defining frame of reference. IBM is always considered to have missed
the minicomputer market because the company was convinced that the
computing market was defined by the mainframe computers at which
IBM excelled.

it is easy for products and services to
become prisoners of their underlying
concept

We also saw earlier how James Dyson’s redefinition of the washing
machine concept was rejected by conventional manufacturers.

The watch industry was transformed in the 1970s by reframing the
boundaries of the market, a technique which we explore in detail in a
later chapter. The reframing exercise switched the focus of attention
from time-piece to fashion accessory. As a result, many traditional
products were leapfrogged by new products which had more in common
with disposable fashion goods than the solid time-pieces of old.

The coffee bar market offers a similar example, in that the conventional
market provided a product which was fast and cheap, where the key