Page 52 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

53231_Innovation and Entrepreneurship.qxd 11/8/2002 10:50 AM Page 45

Source: The Unexpected 45

The first thing is to ensure that the unexpected is being seen;
indeed, that it clamors for attention. It must be properly featured in
the information management obtains and studies. (How to do this is
described in some detail in Chapter 13.)
Managements must look at every unexpected success with the
questions: (1) What would it mean to us if we exploited it? (2) Where
could it lead us? (3) What would we have to do to convert it into an
opportunity? And (4) How do we go about it? This means, first, that
managements need to set aside specific time in which to discuss
unexpected successes; and second, that someone should always be
designated to analyze an unexpected success and to think through
how it could be exploited.

But management also needs to learn what the unexpected success
demands of them. Again, this might best be explained by an example.
A major university on the eastern seaboard of the United States
started, in the early 1950s, an evening program of “continuing educa-
tion” for adults; in which the normal undergraduate curriculum leading
to an undergraduate degree was offered to adults with a high school
diploma.
Nobody on the faculty really believed in the program. The only
reason it was offered at all was that a small number of returning
World War II veterans had been forced to go to work before obtain-
ing their undergraduate degrees and were clamoring for an oppor-
tunity to get the credits they still lacked. To everybody’s surprise,
however, the program proved immensely successful, with qualified
students applying in large numbers. And the students in the pro-
gram actually outperformed the regular undergraduates. This, in
turn, created a dilemma. To exploit the unexpected success, the
university would have had to build a fairly big first-rate faculty.
But this would have weakened its main program; at the least, it
would have diverted the university from what it saw as its main
mission, the training of undergraduates. The alternative was to
close down the new program. Either decision would have been a
responsible one. Instead, the university decided to staff the pro-
gram with cheap, temporary faculty, mostly teaching assistants
working on their own advanced degrees. As a result, it destroyed
the program within a few years; but worse, it also seriously dam-
aged its own reputation.
The unexpected success is an opportunity, but it makes demands. It