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44 THE PRACTICE OF INNOVATION

strated in IBM’s show window on Madison Avenue, where it drew
enormous crowds, IBM’s computer was programmed to calculate all
past, present, and future phases of the moon.
But then businesses began to buy this “scientific marvel” for the
most mundane of purposes, such as payroll. Univac, which had the
most advanced computer and the one most suitable for business uses,
did not really want to “demean” its scientific miracle by supplying
business. But IBM, though equally surprised by the business demand
for computers, responded immediately. Indeed, it was willing to sac-
rifice its own computer design, which was not particularly suitable
for accounting, and instead use what its rival and competitor (Univac)
had developed. Within four years IBM had attained leadership in the
computer market, even though for another decade its own computers
were technically inferior to those produced by Univac. IBM was will-
ing to satisfy business and to satisfy it on business’ terms—to train
programmers for business, for instance.
Similarly, Japan’s foremost electronic company, Matsushita (bet-
ter known by its brand names Panasonic and National), owes its rise
to its willingness to run with unexpected success.
Matsushita was a fairly small and undistinguished company in the
early 1950s, outranked on every count by such older and deeply
entrenched giants as Toshiba or Hitachi. Matsushita “knew,” as did
every other Japanese manufacturer of the time, that “television would
not grow fast in Japan.” “Japan is much too poor to afford such a lux-
ury,” the chairman of Toshiba had said at a New York meeting around
1954 or 1955. Matsushita, however, was intelligent enough to accept
that the Japanese farmers apparently did not know that they were too
poor for television. What they knew was that television offered them,
for the first time, access to a big world. They could not afford televi-
sion sets, but they were prepared to buy them anyhow and pay for
them. Toshiba and Hitachi made better sets at the time, only they
showed them on the Ginza in Tokyo and in the big-city department
stores, making it pretty clear that farmers were not particularly wel-
come in such elegant surroundings. Matsushita went to the farmers
and sold its televisions door-to-door, something no one in Japan had
ever done before for anything more expensive than cotton pants or
aprons.
Of course, it is not enough to depend on accidents, nor to wait for
the lady at the dinner table to express unexpected interest in one’s
apparently failing product. The search has to be organized.