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CHAPTER 3 THE MILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS IDEA
are now the largest private university in the world, offering
more than a hundred degree programs to 280,000 students.
When Federal Express saw the need to offer an overnight
delivery service, they applied the bank industry’s practice of
clearing checks overnight to the overnight delivery of packages!
NetJets (a company owned by Warren Buffett) recognized
that there were many companies that wanted their executives
to have the convenience of traveling by private jet, but could
not justify the costs of purchasing and maintaining a plane
of their own. So, they took the concept of timeshare from the
property industry (a few people sharing a holiday resort
home) and applied it to air travel. By paying just a fraction
of the cost of owning a jet, each customer of NetJets gets to
own a share of a private plane and a fixed number of flight
hours a year. By pioneering this concept of ‘fractional jet
ownership,’ NetJets is now the world leader in private aviation.
Can you adapt a successful product/ process to your area of
business to create your competitive advantage?
3) Combination
Combining two or more products or ideas into one is one of
the most common ways to innovate a competitive advantage.
Think about these examples. The Fax machine is the result of
94 SECRETS OF BUILDING MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESSES
