Page 245 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

53231_Innovation and Entrepreneurship.qxd 11/8/2002 10:50 AM Page 238

238 ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGIES

cies had become scarce all through the Third World, they had honed
their skills and become the “specialists.”
To attain a specialty niche always requires something new, some-
thing added, something that is genuine innovation. There were guide-
books for travelers before Baedeker, but they confined themselves to
the cultural scene—churches, sights, and so on. For practical
details—the hotels, the tariff of the horse-drawn cabs, the distances,
and the proper amount to tip—the traveling English milord relied on
a professional, the courier. But the middle class had no courier, and
that was Baedeker’s opportunity. Once he had learned what informa-
tion the traveler needed, how to get at it and to present it (the format
he established is still the one many guidebooks follow), it would not
have paid anyone to duplicate Baedeker’s investment and build a
competing organization.
In the early stages of a major new development, the specialty skill
niche offers an exceptional opportunity. Examples abound. For many,
many years there were only two companies in the United States mak-
ing airplane propellers, for instance. Both had been started before
World War I.
A specialty skill niche is rarely found by accident. In every
single case, it results from a systematic survey of innovative
opportunities. In every single case, the entrepreneur looks for the
place where a specialty skill can be developed and can give a new
enterprise a unique controlling position. Robert Bosch spent
years studying the new automotive field to position his new com-
pany where it could immediately establish itself as the leader.
Hamilton Propeller, for many years the leading airplane propeller
manufacturer in the United States, was the result of a systematic
search by its founder in the early days of powered flight.
Baedeker made several attempts to start a service for the tourist
before he decided on the guidebook that then bore his name and
made him famous.
The first point, therefore, is that in the early stages of a new indus-
try, a new market, or a new major trend, there is the opportunity to
search systematically for the specialty skill opportunity—and then
there is usually time to develop a unique skill.
The second point is that the specialty skill niche does require a skill
that is both unique and different. The early automobile pioneers were,
without exception, mechanics. They knew a great deal about machin-
ery, about metals and about engines. But electricity was alien to them.