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Source: Changes in Perception 105

phenomenon is irrelevant. It remains a fact. Very often it cannot be
quantified; or rather, by the time it can be quantified, it is too late to
serve as an opportunity for innovation. But it is not exotic or intangi-
ble. It is concrete: it can be defined, tested, and above all exploited.

II

THE PROBLEM OF TIMING
Executives and administrators admit the potency of perception-
based innovation. But they tend to shy away from it as “not practical.”
They consider the perception-based innovator as weird or just a
crackpot. But there is nothing weird about the Encyclopedia
Britannica, about the Ford Thunderbird or Celestial Seasonings. Of
course, successful innovators in any field tend to be close to the field
in which they innovate. But the only thing that sets them apart is their
being alert to opportunity.
One of the foremost of today’s gourmet magazines was launched
by a young man who started out as food editor of an airlines maga-
zine. He became alert to the change in perception when he read in the
same issue of a Sunday paper three contradictory stories. The first
said that prepared meals such as frozen dinners, TV dinners, and
Kentucky Fried Chicken accounted for more than half of all meals
consumed in the United States and were expected to account for
three-quarters within a few years. The second said that a TV program
on gourmet cooking was receiving one of the highest audience rat-
ings. And the third that a gourmet cookbook in its paperback edition,
that is, an edition for the masses, had mounted to the top of the best-
seller lists. These apparent contradictions made him ask, What’s
going on here? A year later he started a gourmet magazine quite dif-
ferent from any that had been on the market before.
Citibank became conscious of the opportunity offered by the mov-
ing of women into the work force when its college recruiters reported
that they could no longer carry out their instructions, which were to hire
the best male business school students in finance and marketing. The
best students in these fields, they reported, were increasingly women.
College recruiters in many other companies, including quite a few
banks, told their managements the same story at that time. In response,
most of them were urged, “Just try harder to get the top-flight