Chapter 7

Empowering Innovation Champions

 

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

—Steve Jobs, co-founder and late CEO of Apple¹

AS JOBS SUGGESTS TALENT is critical for innovation. This chapter explains how to hire and empower product champions to enable them to be innovative. Empowering innovation champions means providing them with resources, autonomy, and incentives to invent, develop, and commercialize innovations. One of the biggest threats that firms face today is the loss of talent to start-ups, either those founded by their own talent or by others who steal their talent. Empowering innovation champions ensures that such start-ups occur within the firm rather than outside in the market.

Legendary exit of champions from incumbents include Nikola Tesla leaving Edison to develop AC with George Westinghouse (see Chapter 2); Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and six others leaving Shockley Semiconductor to start the Fairchild Semiconductor Division; Moore and Noyce subsequently leaving that company to start Intel; John Warnock leaving Xerox PARC to cofound Adobe when Xerox would not commercialize InterPress; Steve Wozniak leaving HP to start Apple. Wozniak had even offered HP the first personal computer he created. HP declined the offer. Recent examples include Tony Fadell leaving Philips and later joining Apple to develop the popular iPod (see story later in this chapter); Roger Newton, champion of the hugely profitable Lipitor, leaving Parke Davis to start Esperion, which Pfizer subsequently bought back for $1.3 billion (see story later in this chapter).

Indeed, the United States is a vibrant market for such start-ups precisely because of such mobility. Silicon Valley is an epitome of such mobility and innovation. The very success of the markets in the United States and Silicon Valley to enable innovation champions to found start-ups on their own pressures firms to empower innovators within rather than bleed them to the market.

Are innovation champions just lucky individuals? What are their characteristics? Can teams substitute for them? Should a firm have one at the top or many at the bottom? This chapter addresses these issues with examples.

Luck Versus Innovation Champions

Luck or “being in the right place at the right time” is one of the most commonly attributed reasons for the success of innovators. Examples abound. Ray Croc, a milkshake salesman who built McDonald's hamburger franchise, supposedly stumbled on the formula when he noticed high sales of milkshake machines from a fast-food store in Pomona. Bill Gates supposedly stumbled on the contract from IBM for the first operating system for the PC because the leading candidate, Gary Kildall, was out flying his plane. Steve Jobs supposedly stumbled on the idea for a graphical user interface (popularized as Windows) on a lucky visit to the Palo Alto Research Center, which had a working prototype. And Roger Newton, who championed the development of the multibillion-dollar drug Lipitor and then cofounded and sold Esperion for $1.2 billion has been called “the luckiest man in the drug business.”²

These anecdotes have fed the myth that luck is the root cause of innovators' success . One author puts luck down as one of the first laws of enduring innovation success.³ Indeed, throughout history, belief in luck has been quite strong, leading people at various times to adopt lucky charms, wear bracelets, and make signs to get lucky. Knocking on wood, the number 13, a black cat, and walking under a leaning ladder are common signs of good or bad luck. Polls indicate that until even recently up to 75% of Americans considered themselves to be at least a little superstitious.⁴ Luck seems to have “the power to transform the improbable into the possible, to make the difference between life and death, reward and ruin, happiness and despair.”⁵

My coauthor Peter Golder and I did a deep study of many famous stories about the start of great innovations and the markets they fueled, including the four above. We tracked the origin of sixty-six markets by researching archives going back decades and, in some cases, over a hundred years. Our results are published in a couple of articles and a book.⁶ We found that under scrutiny, luck fades as an explanation of innovation. Rather, innovators exhibit some distinct characteristics that explain their success and make them appear lucky: vision of future markets, distinction from the norm, persistence in the faces of odds, and willingness to take great risks. These traits enable champions to see great opportunity in ordinary events and capitalize on them to create innovations. In hindsight, without knowledge of the details of the events and the characteristics of champions, these events appear as lucky breaks. But on close scrutiny, it's the characteristics of champions that enable them to identify and create these lucky breaks. Luck is not the cause of success. It is actually the fruit of vision, uniqueness, persistence, and risk taking.

For example, the McDonald brothers were the founders of the hugely successful fast-food store in Pomona that was also selling a lot of milkshakes. The brothers lacked either the vision or the energy to expand the successful store. Ray Croc had those characteristics. When the owners refused, Ray Croc bought the store from them for $2 million and set out to build a national and then global franchise. Likewise, at PARC, the graphical user interface was available to Xerox for commercialization. Neither the firm nor any engineer at PARC did much with commercializing it. Steve Jobs, who was then deeply involved at Apple in building user-friendly products for consumers, did. Similarly, Gary Kildall, who had already had an operating system for personal computers, did not see the market when IBM came shopping for an operating system. Bill Gates who was intent on being at the cutting edge of the emerging personal computer revolution, did. The story later in this chapter will document how Roger Newton crossed numerous hurdles and labored long and hard to get Lipitor into trials and into market. He also built Esperion from scratch after leaving the firm that benefited from Lipitor. Luck has little to do with his success.

Characteristics of Champions

These examples suggest some characteristics of champions that distinguish them and make them appear lucky.

First, champions have a vision for the future mass market. They see what others around them do not. They are principally visionaries with a unique worldview. The vision of champions radically alters the current groupthink of the industry, thereby providing an innovative approach to addressing consumer demand. Envisioning the mass market is the most valuable characteristic of champions because it foresees how the market is evolving and identifies its need ahead of the competition. Croc, Gates, and Jobs envisioned huge future markets for fast food, personal computing, and easy computing that others of the time did not see, including those who had promising products.

Second, champions are mavericks and dissenters. They dissent from the norm and from experts at the time. Their vision is unique. Most people around them do not share their vision. However, this uniqueness, this tendency to disagree with the norm, is the reason that champions see opportunity where others do not. For example, Tata's idea to create a $2,500 small car a few years back was ridiculed by senior executives of the auto industry. Akio Morita's quest to develop a portable music player was repeatedly resisted by Sony's own engineers. Such resistance and ridicule is why innovation champions often leave the organization in which they planned to develop their innovation. For example, Newton's persistent effort to develop and commercialize Lipitor caused so much distress in Parke-Davis that he left the firm, even though the product was launched and became highly successful.

Third, champions have the conviction to persist against heavy odds. Often the champion must fight a lonely battle to persuade others about his or her vision. The market for the innovation may not exist, may be radically different from the current market, or its full potential is difficult to fathom. There may be numerous setbacks in the production, manufacture, or testing phases of product development. Entrenched interest within the firms may strongly resist the innovation. More important, the product might not have financing for a successful launch. All of these possibilities would easily restrain a budding idea. Champions have the motivation and passion to overcome these obstacles and persist with the vision they believe holds the promise of success. For example, King Gillette struggled for many years to come up with the technology to develop a safety razor with a disposable blade, when the technology at the time was for reusable knives for shaving.

Fourth, because of their vision of the innovation's future market, champions are willing to take risks to bring it to fruition. The resources, talent, and responsibility that they get reduce their aversion to risk. With the conviction that their new product will be a future success, champions are able to tolerate risk and instill this trait in their teams. For example, Fred Smith took enormous risks over almost a decade as he sought to build a national express mail delivery system from scratch. Jeff Bezos took great risks under tremendous pressure in choosing rapid growth over profits to build Amazon into an electronic retail powerhouse. Mark Zuckerberg took great risks in foregoing repeated lucrative offers to purchase his big innovation, Facebook. Chapter 3 describes these stories in detail.

These unusual characteristics enable innovation champions to transform ordinary events and ideas into extraordinary innovations. To those not knowledgeable of all the facts, the events and ideas seem like big lucky breaks that befell ordinary people.

Testing Luck

Psychologist Richard Wiseman did a long-term study to carefully test the validity of luck.⁷ His findings further discredit the theory of luck and reinforce the theory of distinct characteristics for the success of innovators.

Wiseman placed advertisements in newspapers and magazines, asking people who considered themselves extraordinarily lucky or unlucky to contact him. He attracted four hundred volunteers over the years representing a variety of ages, backgrounds, and jobs. He interviewed these volunteers, asked them to keep diaries, respond to questionnaires, answer intelligence tests, and participate in experiments. His findings showed that luck is not magical. People are not born lucky or unlucky. Nor is luck a random event. Rather, people's thoughts and behavior are primarily responsible for their self-styled good or bad luck. Just like our study reported above, luck is not the cause of success but the fruit of human cognitions and behavior.

Wiseman found that lucky people generate their own good luck through four principles. They notice chance opportunities, create self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations, make lucky decisions by relying on their own intuition, and transform bad luck into good through resilience. Interestingly, the first two of these characteristics are similar to the first one that emerged from my own coauthored research: vision of the mass market. The latter two of these characteristics are similar to the second one that emerged from my research: persistence against great odds. Wiseman's other findings expand what I call the characteristics innovation champions.

For example, Wiseman's experiments found that self-styled lucky people consistently encounter chance opportunities whereas self-styled unlucky ones do not. An experiment he conducted explains the difference. He asked all his participants to count how many photographs were in an issue of a newspaper. On average, lucky people took seconds to do so while unlucky ones took two minutes. The reason is the following. The second page of the newspaper had a half page message that stated, “Stop counting—there are 43 photographs in the newspaper.” The unlucky people tended to miss it while the lucky people tended to catch it.

Further experiments showed that unlucky people missed chance opportunities because they are tense and anxious and too focused on specifics that they are searching for. Lucky people are relaxed and open and see beyond the specifics they are looking for. Lucky participants introduce change and variety in their lives. Unlucky participants are focused and repeat the same set of narrow behaviors. Other experiments revealed that lucky people consider themselves lucky when they encounter some mishap because it could have been worse. However, when unlucky people encounter the same mishap, they attribute it to just their own bad luck. Thus, lucky people tend to have a positive outlook in life and have high expectations of the future.

The overall message from Wiseman's tests of lucky and unlucky individuals is the same as that from our archival research of innovation champions. Champions are not born lucky and are not just fortunate, but have distinct characteristics that make them appear lucky.

Champions Versus Teams

The thinking among researchers has swung for and against champions. The current trend seems to favor teams and oppose champions. For example, one study suggests that champions do not directly affect the performance of new product development.⁸ Other studies have praised the advantage of teams. The rationale for teams is that they represent collective wisdom, prune extreme ideas, and screen out erroneous thinking. However, precisely for these reasons, champions play a critically important role in the context of innovations.

First, good talent is scarce. Andy Ouderkirk, Corporate Scientist Carlton Member at 3M Corporation, reports on a fascinating finding from internal research at 3M.⁹ The firm analyzed the productivity of scientists in terms of patents registered. The study was that the number of patents increased along the breadth of the knowledge of the scientist and more so along depth of the knowledge of the scientist. Breadth is knowledge across areas while depth is knowledge in one area. However, the greatest number of patents were for a few scientists who combined depth and breadth, whom the authors of the study called architects. Such scarce talent, which combines depth and breadth, would be prime candidates for innovation champions. Richard Friedrich, director of Cognition Based Analytics at HP Laboratories, encapsulates the challenge that a large corporation such as HP, with 350,000 employees, faces, “We bet on people, not products.… Most people are not innovators.”¹⁰ Thus the challenge is to identify and empower such talent as champions.

Second, once entrusted with responsibility, champions are motivated to work for the success of the task entrusted to them. The assignment of responsibility makes it difficult for the champion to hide or excuse him- or herself. Thus, as the leader, the champion will strive to assemble resources and talent to get the job done. He or she will also motivate and monitor the team in order to get the most out of them. However, this role does not come automatically with the appointment. Research by Professors Gina O'Connor and Christopher McDermott suggests that leaders need to evolve into the role of champions.¹¹

Third, teams involve collective decision making. They tend to proceed on a majority vote. However, innovations, especially radical innovations, often are the intuition of a single individual. Opinions that are typically known or held widely or by a majority are unlikely to be novel or innovative. They are probably already part of the fabric of everyday life and everyday products. Innovations tend to arise from the insight of creative individuals. Often, the internal structure of an organization hinders such insight. In particular, a long review process can stifle enthusiasm, excessive critique can stymie creativity, and extensive evaluation can hurt timeliness. When a creative individual becomes an innovation champion, he or she can cut through such collective decision making and persuade a team or whole organization of his or her intuition.

Thus, on the one hand, there is great danger that a team may prune out the most promising, high-potential ideas because they are supported by a minority or one individual. On the other hand, champions can easily focus on radical innovations, which could get screened out by a majority vote of a team. The presence of a champion does not negate the role of teams. Rather, it provides the team with a clear and indisputable leader offering important benefits to the organization and the task at hand.

Fourth, the appointment of a champion clearly entrusts responsibility of a task to an individual. This assignment of responsibility makes it easier for senior management to reward or punish (judiciously, as we shall see later) good or bad performance, respectively. Responsibility is diffused when assigned to an entire team. Management often has difficulty tracking down who is responsible for innovation and for providing appropriate rewards to the individual.

Champions at the Top Versus the Bottom

A key issue when discussing champions is whether there should be one at the top or many around the whole organization. Akio Morita in Sony, Ratan Tata in Tata Motors, and Steve Jobs at Apple are examples of a champion (CEO) at the top, as the subsequent cases illustrate. However, more important is that a firm should tap its entire pool of employees to identify, incentivize, and develop distributed champions throughout the organization. The subsequent cases show that champions within the organization, such as Roger Newton and Tony Fadell can be equally impactful. In general, relying on champions throughout the organization is preferable to relying on only one at the top, for several reasons.

First, relying on the whole employee base ensures a much wider pool of potential champions. The risk of relying on one innovation champion at the top, such as the CEO of the organization, is huge. The firm puts all its future eggs in one basket. If the CEO is a repeated visionary, as Jobs was at Apple in the 2000s, the firm comes out a huge winner. But if the CEO turns out to be repeatedly wrong, the firm could well fail, as Apple very nearly did in 1985 when Jobs was fired from the company. Failures are common with innovations. Beforehand, it is difficult to predict who might be a good champion; tapping the whole employee pool is an excellent approach to reducing risk.

Second, one can consider the firm as a pool of talent and energy. This talent harbors a vast number of ideas, in primitive form, that could mature into successful innovations under the right conditions. The energy could provide the organization with fresh impetus as its growing bureaucracy slows it down. Why not tap into this talent pool for champions? A survey at the University of Southern California indicated that half the students were interested in starting their own businesses.¹² The student body at the university is about 37,000. Thus, there were 18,500 ideas (albeit many primitive ones) for entrepreneurship and innovation. Most organizations likewise have employees who might harbor ideas for innovation and entrepreneurship. Most of these ideas will be unproductive (see Chapter 5). But unless a firm generates them, it will not find the few that will be winners. There is certainly a role for the CEO of a firm to be the champion of innovation. But there is an even greater opportunity for tapping into the whole talent pool of a firm to nurture champions.

Third, starting with a large pool gives the firm leverage in sifting strong from weak champions. In evaluating talent, the mean of the talent pool is not so important. The variance in talent and the maximum performance is what matters. The reason is that the future of the firm is defined not so much by the mean performance of all employees but by the brilliance of a few who can generate new ideas and motivate and lead a team to translate them into new products and new markets.¹³ The probability of identifying such outstanding talent increases with the variance in talent and the inclusion of top performers. Thus a firm is better off tapping the whole employee pool to identify champions.

Fourth, the leadership at the top has often been at the company for a long time and is immersed in a set way of thinking and executing. Employees throughout the organization are more likely to think of solutions beyond the routine and traditional. Especially when it comes to developing radical innovations, such out-of-the-box thinking is critical. Thus, it is better to tap the whole body of employees for talent that could be developed into champions. Google's Associate Product Manager program (discussed in the following section) is a good example of this approach. Alex Backer, founder and CEO of Ab Inventio, explains how he devolves power through the organization. “We give people autonomy because people do not like to be managed. Everyone can choose their own title.”¹⁴ Though Steve Jobs is a visionary champion in his own right, he believed in empowering talent within the firm and not micromanaging everything. As he says, “The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.”¹⁵

The following stories reveal the role of champions in organizations and illustrate these principles at work.

Distributed Champions: Google's “Young Turks” Program

Google is frequently ranked among the world's most innovative companies. The firm started off in the early 2000s and surpassed older giants such as Yahoo! and Microsoft based on a simple but radical innovation in search. Since its founding, lots of competitors have been close on its heels, striving to develop a better search engine. Google has realized that to stay ahead of the competition, it needs to attract and retain the best talent in the market and train them to be unrelentingly innovative. That realization has being reinforced by the tremendous pressure of talent migration facing the company. On the one hand, competitors are often looking to pirate top employees. On the other hand, top employees themselves are interested in taking their ideas private and starting their own businesses. Google's realization led to the development of the Associate Product Manager (APM) program, a type of young turks program.

Google's Associate Product Manager program breaks the traditional promotion mold by identifying and mentoring champions early in their careers. The program rewards innovation, irrespective of age or seniority, by giving employees substantial leadership roles.¹⁶ One participant said of the program, “We invest more into our APM program than any other company has ever invested into young employees.”¹⁷ Google tried hiring senior product managers from other companies such as Microsoft but abandoned that strategy because the hires could not adapt to the Google culture. Now the APM program picks the best and the brightest talent, usually fresh out of college, and allows them to head key projects within the company. Google helps candidates in the program cope with their vast responsibilities by providing each with a buddy, a mentor, and a management coach.¹⁸

Google APM Brian Rakowski, a Stanford graduate, was put in charge of Gmail and was given the responsibility of launching a big product. Rakowski was only 22 at the time.¹⁹ Google APM Frances Haugen led a team that analyzed customer results for multibillion-dollar Google AdWords product, which places ads on search results. Haugen was also 22 years old at the time. Her staff of about twenty, included engineers and people twice her age.²⁰ Prem Ramaswami was only 25 years old when he was put in charge of Google Checkout (an online-payment application).²¹

The ability to head a global project at such a young age is a big motivation for the highly talented.²² Apart from the monetary benefits and the peer and industry-wide recognition, the program has helped engender a new class of entrepreneurs. Of the program's candidates that left Google, many have done so to start their own technology company. Another advantage of being a candidate in the program is its appeal to venture capital firms looking to fund new companies. Google pursues this program even though it may upset senior employees who are bypassed and APMs who might leave the program to start off on their own. Marissa Mayer, a former Google vice president, explains the rationale for the program, “That kind of restlessness,” she says, “is the gene that Larry and Sergey look for. We get two to four good years, and if 20 percent stay with the company, that's a good rate. Even if they leave it's still good for us. I'm sure that someone in this group is going to start a company that I will buy some day.”²³

Thus Google invests a great deal to attract, train, and empower leaders, many of whom may leave the firm, in order to get the best ideas and innovations from them. What is unique and most valuable about the company is that these champions are distributed across the whole firm. Google does not subscribe to the philosophy of one super champion at the head of the company. This philosophy has many merits, as stated above. It also contrasts with some of the subsequent examples, especially with that of Apple.

Serial Champion: Roger Newton

Roger Newton's championing of Lipitor—the most profitable drug as of 2012—is a fascinating story. Newton joined Parke-Davis as a senior scientist after earning a PhD in nutrition from U.C. Davis. With fellow scientist Dick Maxwell, he established a drug discovery program, working toward treatments for atherosclerosis, the thickening of the artery wall due to buildup of plaque from “bad” cholesterol. The team focused on reducing quantities of low-density lipoproteins, or LDL, the bad cholesterol, and increasing quantities of high-density lipoproteins, or HDL, the good cholesterol.²⁴

Among scientists in the atherosclerosis team, Newton's ability to envision potential where others see failure set him apart. This ability led to his eventual position as the project chair of a group working on a medication to reduce LDL levels. With the leadership of Bruce D. Roth, after several long years of hard work, the team synthesized five potential candidate compounds to proceed through clinical trials.²⁵

The team's enthusiasm and persistence were put to the test as their compounds failed one after the other. The first two of the five compounds were found to be toxic. The third compound was absorbed by other organs, and the fourth was patented by a competitor.²⁶ However, Newton and Roth had a vision of what the market needed and an LDL pill that could fit that need. They continued research with this vision in sight. Their tenacity paid off. After long months of research, they identified a fifth compound (atorvastatin) that showed promise. Furthermore, the team discovered that the compound existed in mirror forms.²⁷ If the more potent form could be isolated, the drug could be very effective.

While the research department was enthusiastic about this latest compound, management and marketing became increasingly hesitant to endorse it because their four prior attempts had failed. Management wanted to stop production of atorvastatin. The marketing department reasoned that even if this compound passed clinical trials, it would be difficult to market against competition. Four other statin drugs had already entered the market from companies with strong physician and patient relations. Management believed that Lipitor would be swept away by its competitors.²⁸ They proposed a new product that was certain, they believed, to attract more customers.

However, Newton said of those four failures, “I look at that not as failures. I look at that as learnings.”²⁹ Newton's persuasive skills were put to the test at a Parke-Davis internal meeting. As the champion in support of Lipitor's entry into clinical trials, he faced an impatient and frustrated management team head-on. “When people wanted to walk away from it because it was the fifth statin, I'm the guy who got in the way and said, ‘you can't do that.’ …I put my proverbial neck in the guillotine,”³⁰ Newton recounts in a lecture. He effectively argued with management for his product to continue through clinical trials. Roger pleaded for what he believed was “the right thing to do.”³¹ As Michael Pape, a collaborator on Lipitor and cofounder of Esperion, put it, “You have to have someone who can communicate the data.… Roger was persistent and aggressive.”³² Newton reassured management that the product would do anything but fail. His team's drive and passion played a strong factor in getting this fifth compound accepted and into production.³³ One reporter describes his achievement in these words, “His persistence and courage …saved the atorvastatin program from the drug development dustbin.”³⁴

The fruits of Newton's labor were enormous, with sales surpassing $1 billion in the first year. Eventually it became one of the biggest blockbuster drugs on the market with a peak of $12.9 billion in sales in 2007.³⁵ Newton himself credits Pfizer with cleverly marketing the drug. However, his core contribution in championing research and clinical trials for the drug is also clear.

Unfortunately, the force with which Newton fought for Lipitor's case caused him to lose favor with management. At Parke-Davis, Newton worked more as an entrepreneur than a traditional manager who implemented strategies of his superiors. As David Scheer, a cofounder of Newton's company, Esperion, recalls, “[Newton] had wanted to segue into a place where he didn't have constraints, a position where he had more empowerment and encouragement.”³⁶ This created conflicts with management. As Lipitor grew in popularity, Newton's career declined. He was removed from his administrative position, his influence diminished, and his research group was disbanded. In 2000, Pfizer took over Warner Lambert, of which Parke-Davis was a subsidy, in order to gain complete control of Lipitor. By then, however, Newton, and several members of Lipitor's research team had left Parke-Davis. Newton charitably describes his treatment, thus, “I was involved in a re-organization. I couldn't do the science that I wanted to do. I couldn't pursue what I was really interested in”³⁷

Newton's entrepreneurial streak kicked in and he and fellow doctors from the Lipitor team set out for Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they cofounded Esperion, a pharmaceutical company. Esperion, like Newton's previous department, worked primarily in the atherosclerosis field and provided Newton with both the knowledge and materials to pursue products without managerial constraints. The company blossomed and in less than two years was ready with its first product for clinical trials. In a small trial, the team's latest discovery, a big protein that had to be injected through an IV line, seemed to clear artery plaque.³⁸ Eager to cash in on Esperion's discovery and in an effort to protect their $1 billion investment on another HDL-raising drug, Pfizer acquired Esperion for $1.3 billion as a semi-independent organization.³⁹

While certain Esperion-invented drugs appeared to have promise, they never advanced into clinical trials because of problems with the manufacturing design. Pfizer's HDL pill, Torcetrapib, increased mortality in a big clinical trial, causing more fiscal problems for the company. As a result, several Pfizer plants, including the Esperion facility, were scheduled for shut down. Again, Newton refused to just sit back. In 2008, he secured sufficient venture capital to restart Esperion. Says Newton of this venture, “I have a vision of wanting to continue the work we started with the first Esperion.”⁴⁰ As a newly opened company, they hope to put one of their first products, ETC. 1002, through clinical trials.⁴¹

Lipitor is, even today, the most profitable drug ever on the market.⁴² But it represents much more. It began as part of Newton's dream to make a difference in the world. Because he was persistent, passionate, and had a vision of the market, the dream became a prototype and, after passing clinical trials, had an impact on millions of lives. Of working in pharmaceutical research, Newton says, “This is not something for the weak of spirit or someone who is not willing to persist.”⁴³

Championing Mass Market of the Future: Tata Nano

Ratan Tata's revolutionary people's car, the Nano, exemplifies the importance of a champion in envisioning the market for new products. In 2003, at age 65, Ratan Tata was the chairman of the Tata Group of Industries, one of the largest and most respected Indian conglomerates with subsidiaries in software, hotels, steel, cable, wireless, and automotive. He was not the founder but the great-grandson of the founder of the Tata conglomerate. Tata Motors was the largest and leading automotive firm in India. They were the leader in commercial vehicles, fifth in the world in the production of medium and heavy trucks and the second largest heavy bus manufacturer.⁴⁴ However, up until the release of the Nano, Tata Motors was a relatively new player to the passenger car market while the market for extremely low-priced cars (below $5,000) was unheard of.

Ratan Tata said he always had “some sort of unconscious urge to do something for the people of India and transport had been an area of interest.”⁴⁵ Tata dreamt up the idea for a people's car after viewing the unsafe driving conditions prevalent on Indian streets. “I observed families riding on two-wheelers—the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family.”⁴⁶ In India, middle and lower-middle class families choose to transport their families on two-wheelers because, on the one hand, they cannot afford automobiles that cost $5,000 and above. On the other hand, they could afford two-wheelers because of their low cost (under $2,500).

Tata recounts that he never started with the mission of building a $2,500 (Rs 100,000) car. He says:

I was interviewed by the [British newspaper] Financial Times at the Geneva Motor Show and I talked about this future product as a low-cost car. I was asked how much it would cost and I said about Rs1 lakh (100,000). The next day the Financial Times had a headline to the effect that the Tatas are to produce a Rs 100,000 car. My immediate reaction was to issue a rebuttal, to clarify that that was not exactly what I had said. Then I thought, I did say it would be around that figure, so why don't we just take that as a target. When I came back our people were aghast, but we had our goal.⁴⁷

When Ratan Tata first announced the price of the car, critics ridiculed the possibility of successfully launching a vehicle priced at only $2,500. They argued that regulators would not allow such a stripped-down car on the streets, that consumers would not want to buy it, and that if the vehicle did actually hit the market it would generate slim profits, if any. When the General Motors chief for Asia, Nick Reilly, heard of the vehicle he scoffed at it, saying that to succeed “it has to be more attractive than a used car that sells for the same price.”⁴⁸ Other critics expressed the opinion that the finished product would simply be a four-wheeled auto-rickshaw. Auto-rickshaws are three-wheeler taxis, common in most Indian cities. They have a canvas roof and open sides and are noisy, unsteady, and very polluting. Auto-rickshaws can transport two passengers in the back seat, but often transport more people plus their baggage.

Tata had to endure many failures in the fabrication of his vision. Indeed, Tata's initial dream was only a set of two-wheelers joined together. In 2003, Tata commissioned an engineering team, led by 32-year-old Girish Wagh, to begin designing the new “people's car,” with three requirements for the new car: it should be high performance (regarding fuel efficiency and acceleration), adhere to Indian vehicular regulations, and most important be low cost.⁴⁹ The first attempt by Wagh's team was a dismal failure. The vehicle conformed exactly to what the critics believed it would be. In an attempt to cut costs the prototype had bars on the side instead of doors, had plastic flaps to keep out the monsoon rains, and looked much more like a rickshaw than a car. An attempt to include a larger engine to boost power by 20% still failed. Even Wagh admitted, “It was an embarrassment.”⁵⁰

At that point Tata made a shrewd observation. Although at first the car was envisioned as a rural mode of transport with no doors or windows but roll-down curtains, as the project progressed Tata realized that there was a huge mass market for a car built, “like everyone expects a car to be.”⁵¹ Even while stressing the needs to cut costs on parts as low as 50 cents, Tata was also conscious that there should be no quality stigma attached to buying the Nano. “Nobody wants a car that is less than everybody else's car,”⁵² Tata said.

But building the Tata Nano to meet that cost budget was a huge challenge. Luxuries were excluded from the design to meet the low price target. The Nano had no radio, power steering, power windows, air conditioning, or even airbags. To further reduce costs, engineers reduced the weight of the car, cutting material costs. Part sourcing was conducted through Internet auctions. Parts, dashboards, panels and frames all snap together, reducing labor and eliminating nuts and bolts. Tata himself vetoed the design of the traditional windshield wipers for one with a single wiper instead of two, giving the car a cleaner look and further cutting costs. But even then progress toward manufacturing the car to sell for $2,500 was slowed by the rising price of raw materials. As the possibility of fabricating this car dwindled, Tata stubbornly stood by his vision. “I hope it will be seen as the car …which changes the manner in which people in rural and semi-urban India will travel,” said Tata. “It will be a profitable venture for the company.”⁵³

The vision of a $2,500 car for the masses drove the entire design of the Nano. The Nano took five years of tedious designing to meet the vision that Tata had for the Indian market. Finally, on January 10, 2008, Ratan Tata delivered on his vision when he displayed the Tata Nano at the biennial Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi, India. At a revolutionary $2,500, the Nano will cost about as little as the optional DVD player in a Lexus LX 470 SUV1. The Nano is less than half the cost of its closest competitor, the Maruti 800. Even a one- or two-year-old secondhand Maruti 800 sells for about $5,000. The Nano's price is even more attractive when compared to some of the high-end two-wheel scooters and motorbikes that sell in India for about $2,000. The Nano's exhibit was the biggest attraction at the 2008 Auto Expo. The display aroused great excitement among consumers in India, tremendous media attention worldwide, and strong criticism from environmentalists and green advocates. Auto dealers and Tata offices were besieged with inquiries from eager consumers in India, who were quite disappointed that they could not drive off with one right away.

As I explained in the San Francisco Chronicle,⁵⁴ critics may dismiss the Nano as a small, very basic, very poor man's car that causes a mere ripple on the world market. However, the Nano is a radical innovation that can revolutionize automobile manufacturing. Why so? The Nano incorporates three innovations which together make it quite amazing. First, the Nano uses a modular design that enables a knowledgeable mechanic to assemble the car in a suitable workshop. Thus, Tata can outsource assembly to independent workshops that can then assemble the car on buyers' orders. Second, the low cost of the Nano comes not only from its exclusion of frills and luxuries but its inclusion of numerous lighter components from simple door handles and bulbs to the transmission and engine components. The lighter vehicle enables a less polluting, more energy-efficient engine, just when fuel costs are soaring. Third, the Nano's novel design uses a much smaller wheelbase yet allows for 15% more space. These innovations enabled Tata to introduce the Nano at a base price of $2,500. The easily dismissed price point could well represent the most radical innovation of the Nano. Tata Nano meets Euro IV safety and pollution standards. Tata intends to market the product internationally in a couple of years. Competing manufacturers have no immediate answer and could only review their plans for launch of rival brands years in the future. Even then, their prices would not match that of the Nano.

Although it is the product of vast number of engineers and laborers working devotedly to bring it to fruition, the Tata Nano in many respects represents the realization of the vision of its champion, Ratan Tata. Despite the doubts of meeting both the time line and price goal, Ratan Tata remained unfazed and finally delivered on his vision. He achieved what a large corporation, much less a conglomerate, would find hard to achieve: envisioning an unusually low price point to appeal to the mass market and delivering a radical innovation at that price point. As he put it simply, “A promise is a promise.”⁵⁵

Championing a Music Revolution: Apple iPod

The Apple iPod was a highly successful product by itself. However, its real importance to Apple is that it became a platform and template for a series of innovations, including iTunes, the Apple store, iPhone, iPad, and the App Store.

Today the iPod and iTunes are so closely associated with Apple that it is hard to remember that Apple wasn't always a music company. Yet Apple started out as a computer company that pioneered the age of user-friendly personal computers. Originally, it had nothing to do with music or with mobile music gadgets. The firm that created mobile music was Sony, with the introduction of the Walkman. Also, Sony had an MP3 Player before Apple did. How then does Apple now own 75% of the mobile music market, while Sony is struggling? Before Apple marketed the iPod, Sony was five times the size of Apple in market capitalization. After the iPod became a success, Apple was double the size of Sony in market capitalization. How did Apple become a mobile music company? How and why did Sony lose its grip on the mobile music market? The answer to the first question probably lies in the vision and leadership of Steve Jobs and his empowerment of another champion, Tony Fadell.⁵⁶ Chapter 2 provided the answer to the second question.

One of the problems in the design of new products is the large number of decisions that have to be made about various attributes at many levels. For example, attributes on a mobile music player include size of player, thickness of player, number of buttons, shape of buttons, functions of buttons, capacity of player, quality of sound, access to library of songs, ability to add songs, and so on. Designers resolve these problems by surveying consumers for their preferences or by running experiments in which prototypes are presented to consumers for their evaluation. However, the problems becomes complex when consumers are unaware of or can barely envisage the new product. In such situations, the vision and passion of a champion can give designers clear directives as to what attributes to emphasize and what levels on those attributes to target.

Steve Jobs and Tony Fadell represent types of champions who achieved this with the Apple iPod. Their achievement is particularly commendable given that Apple was not a music company, whereas music companies like Philips and Sony had vast experience and resources in music. Jobs's passion was for an easy-to-use mobile music player. Fadell's passion was for the very concept of a digital mobile music player. Further, as the subsequent story illustrates, both Jobs and Fadell showed a remarkable vision of what such a player should be, when existing players were not doing well and Sony and Philips did not seem passionate about one.

The origin of the iPod reveals a fascinating story of how champions can bring their passion to shape innovations in ongoing corporations. The iPod seems to have originated from a fusion of early ideas developed by Tony Fadell and ideas developed at Apple. Fadell was then an independent contractor and an innovator in digital technologies. He held senior technology positions at General Magic and subsequently at Philips. He started at Philips in 1995 as chief technology officer, responsible for the mobile computing group that developed a number of Windows CE–based handheld gadgets. He rose to become vice president of Strategy and Ventures at Philips. It was probably while working at Philips that Fadell envisioned designing and marketing a small hard-disk-based MP3 player with a complementary music service.⁵⁶ That Philips did not recognize his talent and let go one of the architects of the iPod is a sad example of mismanaging champions.

In early 2001 Fadell left Philips and started his own company, Fuse, to develop a mobile music player. Fuse failed to get a second round of funding and had to shut down. Fadell approached several companies with his idea for a mobile music player including Sony, Philips, and RealNetworks.⁵⁷ Most of the companies were not interested but RealNetworks showed some interest. He joined RealNetworks to develop this product but quit only six weeks later over an argument about his moving to Seattle.

It was then that Fadell and Apple connected. Apple was looking for a champion to lead a digital music player project and Fadell was looking for an interested firm with resources. Apple initially gave Fadell an eight-week contract to design a product for Apple.⁵⁸ Satisfied with his work, Apple hired Fadell and gave him a team to work on a portable MP3 player that ultimately became the iPod. As is typical of Apple, the project was veiled in secrecy.

Soon after being hired by Apple, Fadell approached PortalPlayer, a company that was already working on a couple of reference designs for an MP3 player.⁵⁹ Ben Knauss was a senior manager at PortalPlayer. In one of his first meetings with PortalPlayer, Fadell supposedly said, “This is the project that's going to remold Apple and 10 years from now, it's going to be a music business, not a computer business.”⁶⁰ At the time, PortalPlayer had 12 suppliers designing MP3 players based on the company's designs.⁶¹ However, PortalPlayer decided to contract only with Apple. PortalPlayer's designs for MP3 players were primitive. “It was fairly ugly,” said Ben Knauss, then a senior manager at PortalPlayer. “It looked like an FM radio with a bunch of buttons.” The interface “was typical of an interface done by hardware guys.”⁶² But Fadell's vision of the final product allowed him to realize the potential of the design. As Knauss put it, “Tony figured the product was there.”⁶³

No sooner than the project began at Apple, Steve Jobs became involved. “The interesting thing about the iPod was that since it started, it had 100 percent of Steve Jobs' time,” said Knauss. “Not many projects get that. He was heavily involved in every single aspect of the project.”⁶⁴ Jobs increased his meeting with the team from once every two to three weeks to daily. “They'd have meetings and Steve would be horribly offended he couldn't get to the song he wanted in less than three pushes of a button,” Knauss said. “We'd get orders: ‘Steve doesn't think it's loud enough, the sharps aren't sharp enough, or the menu's not coming up fast enough.’ Every day there were comments from Steve saying where it needed to be.”⁶⁵

In its ease of use, the iPod bears the stamp of Jobs, who was unrelenting in his drive to simplify the look and feel of gadgets and rid them of buttons.⁶⁶ It was Jobs's vision of the market that allowed him to foresee the need of an “intuitive” design. The rotary button on the iPod makes dialing a song easy and epitomizes its ease of use. “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” said Jobs. “People think it's this veneer—that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”⁶⁷

As the iPod project neared completion, it was almost killed because of poor battery life. The problem was fixed and the iPod was launched successfully. Fadell was promoted to vice president of engineering for Apple's iPod Division and is credited with supervising development of the first two generations of the iPod.

Jobs' involvement in the iPod bears similarity to Tata's involvement with the Nano. Each was not literally involved in the day-to-day operations. However, their broad directives deeply influenced day-to-day development of the respective products. In the case of the Nano, it was Tata's setting the ridiculously low $2,500 price that shaped every innovation and the whole stream of development. In the case of the iPod, it was Jobs' insistence on an ultra-simple intuitive design that shaped the development of the final product. As his biographer summed it up, “Not since the original Mac had a clarity of vision so propelled a company into the future.”⁶⁸

Mobilizing an Organization for Innovation: Sony Walkman

One of the drawbacks of successful corporations is that they have a large bureaucracy. Bureaucracies hinder timely innovations because of their complex rules, slow decision making, and groupthink. A champion can cut through this bureaucracy to drive a new product to market in a timely manner. Sony's development and marketing of the Walkman is a case in point.⁶⁹ Because the Walkman is the creator of the market that the iPod now dominates, the story is a great complement to that of the iPod. It also demonstrates what Sony had at the time of the Walkman and probably lacked by the time of the iPod.

Ironically, the Walkman arose from a failed innovation, the Pressman. It was championed by two of Sony's cofounders, Chairman Akio Morita and honorary Chairman Masaru Ibuka. In 1978, Mitsuro Ida and a team of engineers at Sony designed a compact (5.25″ × 3.46″ × 1.14″) stereo tape player. However, the small size left no place for a recording device. At that time, a player without a recording device was not of much use. As such, the Pressman was a failure. The engineers focused intently on how to fit a recording device into the gadget.

However, when the gadget caught Ibuka's eye, it triggered another vision. He recalled an entirely independent effort elsewhere in Sony where engineers were trying to develop lightweight headphones. At that time headphones were large, heavy gadgets weighing almost a pound, which audiophiles used to listen to music from their stereo systems.⁷⁰ Lightweight, compact headphones were unknown. Ibuka realized that linking lightweight headphones to the Pressman would create a player that could produce good-quality music, but also one that was portable. The key idea of the Walkman was born.

However, at the time “in the world of tape recorders, Ibuka's idea was heresy. He was mixing up functions. Headphones traditionally were supposed to extend the usefulness of tape recorders, not be essential to their success.”⁷¹ Moreover, design groups within Sony were quite focused on their individual tasks. For example, the headphone and tape recorder groups did not talk to each other. Thus, Ibuka's vision also connected two design groups working in isolation. But the response of the two groups did not ignite enthusiasm for the product; rather, they met the idea with polite indifference. They felt that a player with no recording function and no speakers would be a failure. It would lack the two important abilities, music recording and playback for others' listening pleasure. So his idea got no support from any of the engineers at Sony.

Ibuka went to his thirty-year partner and cofounder, Akio Morita, who loved new gadgets and was receptive to new ideas, even questionable ones. Morita decided they should build and try a prototype, especially since the separate ingredients (player and headphones) were available. The two loved the results of the experiment—the quality and convenience of music while on the go. The product gave them an experience of music neither had ever enjoyed before.

Morita decided immediately to lean on the tape recorder division to develop the gadget. In so doing, he shocked the division, because the product appeared so irrational. However, though he did not dictate the course of action, he made clear to the division that this was his pet project and he was really interested in its success. The division proceeded with development. The actual responsibility for building the gadget was given to an engineer, Yasuo Kuroki, under the supervision of Kozo Ohsone, the general manager of the division. By early 1979, they had some prototypes that had a breakeven price of about $249 (¥50,000). However, the price that may appeal to consumers was thought to be $170. The marketing people thought the product was “dumb,” too expensive, and lacked recording ability.⁷²

At a meeting with engineers to resolve the conflict, neither side gave in. The engineers refused to see the logic of the product while Morita remained convinced the product would appeal to teenagers. His passion for the product grew from his observation that young people wanted their music with them wherever they went. At a subsequent meeting to haggle over the price, the engineers finally conceded that they could produce a product for $200. With that small concession, Morita pushed for a price of $165 and a launch date four months away—a speedy delivery time that might well look absurd to a normal employee in the division.

Morita set a target of 60,000 units for the first run. Kuroki thought that target was too high. He was more comfortable with a target of 30,000 units. Not only did he judge the smaller number to be more reasonable but it implied lower losses—because costs seemed to exceed the list price per unit. So he made a deal with Ohsone, without the knowledge of Morita. They would order parts for 60,000 units but produce and inventory only 30,000 units.

The product was launched in July, 1979, with a very limited marketing budget but lots of samples to the press and potential innovators. The press greeted the new product with great excitement. But the target group, teenagers, was lukewarm. Then in August, sales began to pick up. By the first week of September, the product was a hit, and the stock of 30,000 units ran out. Morita wondered why the inventory had run out at the low number, when he had set a target of 60,000 units. He was furious to learn of the lower production level.

The Walkman was soon launched in the United States as the Soundabout and the United Kingdom as the Stowaway, because Sony marketers considered the Japanese name, Walkman, to be funny. However, tourists brought the product from Japan to both countries as the Walkman. And that name stuck. Sony went on to develop a better model, the Walkman II, to overcome limitations of the first product and keep ahead of competitors. When the Walkman II was launched, that product became a huge success. By the end of 1998, Sony had sold about 250 million units worldwide.

Morita got one thing wrong about the market. The initial buyers were not teenagers but yuppies. Perhaps the price was one that made it affordable to the latter group. But in most other aspects, Morita's vision of what the market wanted and at what price point was right on target. Morita's passion for the product resembles that of Jobs for the iPod. His setting of an unrealistically low price seems similar to that of Tata with the Nano.

Steps in Empowering Champions

These examples show the importance of champions in developing and commercializing innovations. Empowering champions in a firm requires some major steps.

First, the firm needs to define a clear product-market domain in which an innovation needs to be developed. For Apple in 2001, it was a digital music player; for Sony in 1979, a mobile music player; for Tata in 2003, an ultra-cheap car. For radical or disruptive innovations, this space could be one in which the firm currently has no product at all, as in the preceding examples. Carving out this space ensures minimal interference from the bureaucracy of the current organization, which could become an impediment as illustrated in Chapter 2 on cannibalization.

Second, the firm needs to identify champions. It should look both to senior talent with experienced records as champions and to young talent with ideas and energy for championing. Most important, the organization should make a concerted effort to identify and grow champions from the talent within. Google's Associate Product Manager program is one example.

Third, the firm needs to empower a champion with clear responsibility, adequate resources, and talent to develop the innovation. For the iPod, Tony Fadell played that role. For the Walkman, Kuroki played that role. For Lipitor, Roger Newton played that role. In addition, Chapters 5 and 6 show how incentives for enterprise and internal competition can be designed to motivate champions to be productive.

Fourth, the firm or champion could provide some broad parameters of performance for what the finished product should look like. Price often is an important parameter in this set. But quality, performance, or convenience are equally critical parameters, as some of the other examples illustrate. For example, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak said of his coconspirator Steve Jobs's fanatical dedication to the quality of Apple's innovations, “That's [the] way he operated throughout his entire tenure at Apple …every product from Apple spoke like it was Steve Jobs.… [Jobs was] not going to put out just some great stuff. It's got to be insanely great.”⁷³

Conclusion

This chapter explains the following important principles in empowering champions of innovation:

• The success of innovation champions appears to but does not really arise from luck. It really arises from champions' distinct characteristics.
• The key characteristics of innovation champions are vision of the mass market, dissension from the norm, persistence in the face of odds, and embracing risk.
• Innovation champions tend to conflict with bureaucracy due to these very characteristics.
• Unsupported innovation champions will leave an organization, taking with them promising ideas and innovations.
• Although CEOs have a role to play in championing innovations, a firm is best off trying to empower champions across the whole pool of its employees.
• Innovation champions can be developed within a firm by proper structuring of responsibility, goals, talent, and resources. In addition, incentives and competition can be structured to motivate and empower innovation champions.

¹ Kirkpatrick, David and Tyler Maronney, “The Second Coming of Apple Through a Magical Fusion of Man,” Fortune (November 9, 1998).

² Herper, Matthew, “The Luckiest Guy in the Drug Business.” Forbes (May 1, 2008). http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/01/pfizer-esperion-pharmacuticals-biz-healthcare-cx_mh_0501pfizer.html

³ Pluskowski, Boris, “The 4 Laws of Enduring Innovation Success,” Complete Innovator (July 4, 2010). http://completeinnovator.com/2010/04/07/the-4-laws-to-enduring-innovation-success/

⁴ Wiseman, Richard, “The Luck Factor,” Skeptical Inquirer, 27, no. 3 (May-June, 2003): 1–5.

⁵ Ibid., 1

⁶ Tellis, Gerard J. and Peter N. Golder, Will and Vision: How Latecomers Grow to Dominate Markets (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001); Tellis, Gerard J. and Golder, Peter N., “First to Market, First to Fail? The Real Causes of Enduring Market Leadership,” Sloan Management Review, 37, no. 2 (1996): 65–75; Golder, Peter N. and Gerard J. Tellis, “Pioneering Advantage: Marketing Logic or Marketing Legend,” Journal of Marketing Research, 30, no. 2 (1993): 158–170.

⁷ Wiseman, “The Luck Factor.”

⁸ Markham, Stephen K. and Abbie Griffin, “The Breakfast of Champions,” Journal of Product Innovation Management, 15 (1998): 436–454.

⁹ Ouderkirk, Andy, “Culture of Innovation at 3M,” Presentation at the Advisory Board Meeting, USC Marshall Center for Global Innovation, May, 2012.

¹⁰ Friedrich, Richard, “Culture of Innovation at HP,” Presentation at the Advisory Board Meeting, USC Marshall Center for Global Innovation, May, 2012.

¹¹ O'Connor, Gina Colarelli, and Christopher M. McDermott, “The Human Side of Radical Innovation,” Journal of Engineering Technology Management, 21 (2004): 11–30.

¹² Holly, Krisztina “Z,” “Accelerating the Impact of Universities in a Shifting Innovation Landscape,” Conference on Innovating in a Global Environment, USC Marshall School of Business, March 17, 2011.

¹³ Shugan, Steven M., and Debanjan Mitra, “Metrics—When and Why Non-Averaging Statistics Work,” Management Science, 55 (January 2009): 4–15.

¹⁴ Backer, Alex, Panel discussion, “Conference on Innovating in a Global Environment,” USC Marshall School of Business, 2011.

¹⁵ Snell, Jason, “Steve Jobs on the Mac's 20th Anniversary,” Macworld.com (February 2, 2004). http://www.macworld.com/article/1029181/themacturns20jobs.html

¹⁶ Levy, Steven, “Google Goes Globe-Trotting,” Newsweek (November 12, 2007): 62–64.

¹⁷ Levy, Steven, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

¹⁸ Levy, “Google Goes Globe-Trotting.”

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Stuart, Candace, “The Medicine Man,” DBusiness (November 2008). http://www.dbusiness.com/DBusiness/November-2008/The-Medicine-Man/

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Herper, “The Luckiest Guy in the Drug Business.”

²⁹ Newton, Roger, “Newton.mov: Can Science Be a Business?” YouTube video. Lafayette University, April 21, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=302sjUypVw8&lr=1&feature=mhum

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ LaMattina, John, “The Story of Statins,” Chemical and Engineering News (June 8, 2009). http://pubs.acs.org/cen/books/87/8723books.html

³² Stuart, “The Medicine Man.”

³³ Libby, Peter, “Review of Triumph of the Heart,” The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 120, no. 1 (Jan 4, 2010).

³⁴ Newton, Roger. “Dr. Roger Newton—Co-Discoverer of Lipitor,” YouTube video. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG_GoaAUdN8

³⁵ Herper, “The Luckiest Guy in the Drug Business.”

³⁶ Newton, “Dr. Roger Newton—Co-Discoverer of Lipitor.”

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Herper, Mathew, “The Luckiest Guy in the Drug Business.”

³⁹ Bomey, Nathan, “Roger Newton's Esperion Therapeutics Launches First Clinical Trial.” http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/esperion-therapeutics-launches-first-clinical-trial/

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Diamond, Patricia F., “What Will Succeed Lipitor as the Next Blockbuster Cholesterol-Lowering Drug?” GEN News (January 11, 2011). http://www.genengnews.com/insight-and-intelligenceand153/what-will-succeed-lipitor-as-the-next-blockbuster-cholesterol-lowering-drug/77899355/

⁴³ Newton, “Newton.mov: Can Science Be a Business?”

⁴⁴ Tata Motors, Press Release, February 5, 2007.

⁴⁵ Noronha, Christabelle, “The Making of the Nano,” The South Asian.com (April-June, 2008). Retrieved July 23, 2012, from http://www.the-south-asian.com/April-June2008/Ratan_Tata_interview_Nano.htm

⁴⁶ Foster, Peter and Pallavi Malhotra, “Ultimate Economy Drive: The £1,300 Car,” The Telegraph (January 10, 2008). Retrieved on July 7, 2012, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1575181/Ultimate-economy-drive-the-1300-car.html

⁴⁷ Noronha, Christabelle, “The Making of the Nano,” The South Asian.com (April–June, 2008).

⁴⁸ Welch, David and Nandini Lakshman, “My Other Car Is a Tata,” BusinessWeek, 4066 (January 3, 2008): 33–34.

⁴⁹ Kripalani, Manjeet, “Inside the Nano Factory,” BusinessWeek (May 9, 2008): 16. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008–05–09/inside-the-tata-nano-factorybusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Noronha, Christabelle, “The Making of the Nano”

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Tellis, Gerard J, “A Lesson for Detroit: Tata Nano,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 31, 2009. The subsequent analysis was first published in this source.

⁵⁴ Kripalani, Manjeet, “Tata Unveils World's Cheapest Car,” BusinessWeek (January 10, 2008).

⁵⁵ Jon Rubinstein may also have played a role in championing the iPod. See Isaacson, Walter (2011), Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

⁵⁶ Kahney, Leander, “Inside Look at Birth of the iPod.”

⁵⁷ Isaacson, Walter, Steve Jobs (Kindle ed.) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

⁵⁸ Levy, Stephen, “The Perfect Thing” Wired (November 2006). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/ipod.html

⁵⁹ Sherman, Erik, “Inside Apple iPod Design Triumph,” Electronics Design Chain (Summer, 2002).

⁶⁰ Kahney, Leander, “Inside Look at Birth of the iPod.”

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Wingfield, Nick, “Hide the Button: Steve Jobs Has His Finger on It,” Wall Street Journal (July 5, 2007): A1.

⁶⁷ Walker, Rob, “The Guts of a New Machine,” The New York Times Magazine (November 30, 2003).

⁶⁸ Isaacson, Walter, Steve Jobs.

⁶⁹ This case draws heavily from Nayak, P. Ranganath and John M. Ketteringham, Breakthroughs: How Leadership and Drive Create Commercial Innovations That Sweep the World (San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer, 1994).

⁷⁰ Bellis, Mary, “The History of the Sony Walkman.” http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/Walkman.htm

⁷¹ Nayak and Ketteringham, Breakthroughs, 119.

⁷² Ibid., p 124.

⁷³ Wozniak, Steve, Interview on “Good Morning America,” ABC News, on the death of Steve Jobs, October 6, 2011.