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•Nine Greatest Selling Innovations 7

differentiator. (It is said that another reason the president advocated this was that
the handlebars of the big bikes were shaped like the eyebrows of Buddha, and this
was an omen and a selling feature.)

In the event the big bikes did not sell well, and had mechanical difficulties because
of the different usage given to them in America, particularly in distances covered.

Short of ideas and also of money, the team in Los Angeles had to use their own
motorbikes to get around, cars being out of the question. President Honda had
always wanted to provide people everywhere with an economical form of transpor-
tation. For this reason he had designed and built small motorcycles which was the
form of transport the team used in the USA.

These bikes, as fate would have it, started to attract attention and some local
bicycle retailers enquired whether they could sell them. To begin with the Honda
managers kept to the original strategy and declined because they were trying to build
a reputation for big bikes. However, in order, it is said, to finance the work they
needed to do on their mechanical problems they agreed to sell some of the small ones.

To protect the image they were fostering for ‘If it’s big bikes it must be Honda’
their innovation was to sell the 50 cc ones from outlets other than their traditional
ones. This improved the depth and breadth of product distribution. From the oppo-
site of the grand plan was success achieved. According to the Motorcycle Industry
Council in Irvine, CA, Honda had a 26 share of the 403,000 units sold in 1998.

Idea 4 – Don’t build the product, license the idea
(Thomas Edison)

The time it takes a product to go from an idea into production depends very much on
the industry in which it lies. The time-to-market of the pharmaceutical business can
be ten years or more due to all the testing necessary to gain the acceptance of the
regulatory authorities. In the computer industry it is likely to be a lot faster. Marketing
people in electronics talk of a product life cycle measured in months rather than years.