The Innovation Sandbox PDF

strategy+business The Innovation Sandbox by C.K. Prahalad from strategy+business issue 44, Autumn 2006 reprint number 06306 Reprint  To create an impossibly low-cost,...

strategy+business The Innovation Sandbox by C.K. Prahalad from strategy+business issue 44, Autumn 2006 reprint number 06306 Reprint  To create an impossibly low-cost, high-quality new business model, start by cultivating constraints. TheInnovation features business models 1 Sandbox by C.K. Prahalad In Bangalore, India, the cost of a Western-style Not far away, prototypes of a multiple-fuel stove for hotel room is typically US$250 to $300 per night. But the rural poor are being tested by a large multinational the indiOne hotel charges $20. The indiOne is modern; corporation. The potential consumers of this stove typi- every room includes an attached bathroom, an LCD cally use cow dung and biomass (sticks and grass) for television, a wireless broadband connection, a small cooking fuels. These fuels are inefficient, and the smoke refrigerator, a coffeemaker, and a work area. The com- from indoor fires can be harmful. With the “combina- mon areas include a pleasant cafeteria, an ATM, a busi- tion chula” (chula is the Hindi word for stove), a house- ness center, and a small gym. The hotel, which positions wife can switch from biomass to natural gas instantly, itself as the provider of “smart basics” for the intelligent depending on her budget and priorities (for example, Illustration by Dan Page traveler, is very profitable. Its gross margins were 65 per- whether she is cooking dinner for family or making tea cent in 2005, compared with 30 to 40 percent for typi- for an unexpected guest). The cost of the combination cal luxury hotels. And the business model is scalable. chula is less than 1,000 rupees (about US$20). If it suc- Ten such hotels are springing up this year in India, and ceeds in India, it will be rolled out across multiple geog- another 25 are planned. (IndiOne is a subsidiary of the raphies, with potentially immense impact on the quality Indian Hotels Company, owners of the famous Taj of life of people throughout the developing world. group of luxury hotels in India.) Innovations like these are not just technological or features business models 2  C.K. Prahalad ([email protected]) is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Wharton School Publishing, 2005), and co- author (with Gary Hamel) of Competing for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 1994). market breakthroughs. They change people’s lives. The felt at the bottom-of-the-pyramid market, but any hotel, by facilitating travel for many more business- industry, in any locale, can generate similar break- features business models people, could greatly expand commerce in India. The throughs by creating a similar context for itself. In India, stove could improve the lives of millions of people. The several such breakthroughs are taking place now, in a process for designing both of these breakthrough inno- global industry that is otherwise plagued by high costs, vations started with the identification of the following stultified traditions, a variety of regulators, a perennially four conditions — all of which are difficult to realize, dissatisfied customer base, and a reputation as an excep- even when taken one at a time: tionally difficult venue for business innovation. That 1. The innovation must result in a product or ser- industry is health care. vice of world-class quality. 2. The innovation must achieve a significant price Bypassing Conventional Approaches reduction — at least 90 percent off the cost of a compa- As a demonstration of the opportunities for break- rable product or service in the West. through innovation, the health-care industry in India is 3. The innovation must be scalable: It must be able ideal. India is known for its dismal state of public health, to be produced, marketed, and used in many locales and the spread of HIV/AIDS, and high rates of infant mor- circumstances. tality. The country has more than 6 million blind peo- 4. The innovation must be affordable at the bottom ple and more than 50 million malnourished children. 3 of the economic pyramid, reaching people with the low- Type 2 diabetes (with related illnesses such as ischemic est levels of income in any given society. heart disease) has reached epidemic proportions, with In countries like India, with 700 million bottom- an estimated 100 million patients expected by 2015. of-the-pyramid consumers at varying levels of income, Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of the population the need for innovations that meet these criteria is now cannot afford the costs of health care; insurance is becoming obvious. The seemingly impossible demand unavailable to most of them. of a hitherto unserved customer base — a $20 hotel Finally, more than 490 million people (about 70 room in an environment of $250 to $300 hotels, or a percent of the Indian population) live in rural and semi- cookstove for use by an impoverished villager — urban areas. They are difficult to reach, especially in a became, in this case, a specification for starting the inno- country where doctors are scarce (the ratio of physicians vation process. to total population is less than one per 100,000 people, This approach could be called an innovation “sand- compared with about one per 160 in the United States). strategy + business issue 44 box” because it involves fairly complex, free-form explo- World-class facilities are even scarcer. Rural patients ration and even playful experimentation (the sand, with must often travel to cities for treatment, a journey of its flowing, shifting boundaries) within extremely fixed excessive cost since their family members travel with specified constraints (the walls, straight and rigid, that them. These constraints affect the nature of health care box in the sand). The value of this approach is keenly in unexpected ways. For example, in the United States, a customized lower-limb prosthetic may require several a new one. Since 1975, the JF has been distributed by a fittings spread over weeks. In India, it must be finished nonprofit, nondenominational organization called the in one eight-hour sitting, so the patient and his or her Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS), family can return home before their money runs out. which fits about 16,000 patients per year, with trained And yet amid all these constraints, a few health-care paramedics as the primary patient contact. BMVSS also providers in India are establishing new global standards ships artificial feet, calipers, and other aids to thousands for cost, quality, and delivery. They do it by bypassing of patients worldwide — more than 50,000 in 2004. the conventional approaches to medical practice. For BMVSS does not charge for its prosthetics and service; example, the Narayana Hrudayalaya cardiac care center, it survives on donations from satisfied patients and from located in Bangalore, is one of the world’s largest philanthropists. providers of heart surgery and other forms of cardiac Another example is the Aravind Eye Care system, features business models care, including care for children. A private corporation, the world’s largest provider of cataract surgery. This it was founded in 2001. Only three years later, in 2004, company, founded in 1976, performed 240,000 surger- the company performed 7,500 cardiac surgeries and ies in 2004 and treated 1.6 million outpatients. The treated 60,000 outpatients, including almost 2,000 founder, Dr. G. Venkataswamy, has said that his goal is telemedicine patients who received consultation and to “wipe out needless blindness.” Thus, Aravind treats treatment at remote sites, accessing specialists through more than 60 percent of its patients free — and contin- satellite- and Internet-based telecommunications links. ues to operate profitably. It’s important to note that the facility and its parent All three health-care innovators, NH, BMVSS, and company, Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH), are profitable. Aravind, have been around long enough to give us con- And NH’s cardiac care is far from the only profitable fidence that these innovative health-care efforts repre- health-care innovation emerging from India. The most sent sustainable businesses. The basic performance of famous example (documented at length in my book The these three systems is captured in Exhibit 1. Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid) is the “Jaipur Faced with the difficulties of an emerging market Foot,” a prosthetic foot made from rubber, intended for like India, health-care managers can easily give up. They below-the-knee amputees, such as people injured by can conclude, as many development experts have, that 4 accidents and land mines. The JF (as it is universally the only way to provide good-quality care at the bottom called) costs about $30, a fraction of the $8,000 to of the pyramid is through public-sector subsidies and $10,000 cost of a similar Western prosthesis; if a patient through philanthropy. Often, this leads to few variations damages, loses, or outgrows it, he or she can simply get on existing products or services. Exhibit 1: Price Structures of Three Breakthrough Innovators Health Delivery System Scale: Procedures 2004 Gross Margin 2004 Return on Capital Cost of Similar Procedure per Year Employed (ROCE) in the U.S. Jaipur Foot 16,000 * * 300x Aravind Eye Care 240,000 54.0% 16.2% 50x NH Cardiac Care 7,500 19.0% 19.5% 30x * Does not apply. All treatment is free. Donations are not directly related to individual patients. Source: Analysis of statistics from Jaipur Foot, Aravind, Narayana Hrudayalaya, New York State Department of Health, Ross Registry, Royal College of Ophthalmologists, United Kingdom National Survey  Exhibit 2: The Innovation Sandbox for Health Care in India This diagram shows the “sandbox” of constraints and experimentation for the health-care industry. The four sides of the box represent the core requirements for successful health-care delivery in a market such as India. Within those constraints, significant creativity is possible in the seven interrelated business model innovations shown in the sand. features business models Source: C.K. Prahalad But suppose we started instead with a simple prem- must overcome to achieve a breakthrough innovation. 5 ise: The poor deserve the same quality of care the rich get. The constraints are like the limits on an ecological niche, Keeping world-class quality as a nonnegotiable standard prodding the evolution of new products and services. For allows us to challenge many assumptions regarding cost, the health-care industry in India, the constraints were quality, and delivery. That, in fact, is what JF, Aravind, world-class quality, new price performance levels, scala- NH, the indiOne hotel chain, and the producer of the bility, and universal access (availability for people in rural combination chula have in common: They are innovat- areas in particular). If the sandbox diagram showed the ing within a set of self-imposed constraints, derived from hotel industry, some constraints would change: Price per- consumer insights that other innovators have ignored. formance (value) would probably remain, but universal access might be replaced by modernity and aesthetics. A The Sandbox in Action concerted effort is needed to identify these core con- Exhibit 2 represents one sandbox: the constraints and straints; there may be more or less than four in some innovative activity for the health-care industry in India. cases, but there should not be many more (or less). Then, strategy + business issue 44 There is no generic sandbox design, any more than there once the sandbox is defined, it can force unconventional could be a generic checklist of strategies that would apply thinking in several directions at once. to every business. For each combination of region and 1. Specialization. Although the basic unit of health- sector — such as hotels, stoves, or health care in India — care delivery around the world is a general hospital, the leaders start by identifying the core constraints that they successful innovators in India have all specialized: JF in prosthetics, Aravind in eye care, and NH in cardiac care. more accustomed to basing their price on the industry- Specialization allows these organizations to make the established cost, plus profit. But with a ceiling for costs features business models most of their resources: people, training, work process determined by customer needs, breakthrough innova- designs, capital equipment, and the requisite investment tors are driven to play more effectively in the rest of the of time and skill for patient acquisition. Specialization sandbox, redesigning their processes as needed to meet also allows each organization to build a unique brand those cost requirements. identity that attracts patients, motivated health-care 3. Capital Intensity. In health care, innovators seek- professionals, and donors. Most importantly, the focus ing breakthrough cost reductions must focus on reduc- on one particular category of service builds expertise ing capital intensity. Specialization allows NH, for that a more general organization could not match. NH example, to purchase only medical equipment related to performs 23 cardiac surgeries per day; a large urban hos- cardiac care, and to use that equipment around the clock pital elsewhere could perform a maximum of four or — typically in three shifts. Off-peak use is further five. The combination of specialization and volume encouraged by incentive; the hospital charges patients allows NH to train its doctors and nurses to become less if they come in for tests during odd hours. experts in a very short time. Medical innovators in India continually search for 2. Pricing. Affordability is critical for both the busi- ways to reduce the fixed and variable cost structure of ness model and the underlying vision of service. NH their products and services. Jaipur Foot is particularly 6 makes no distinction among the quality of service deliv- inventive at this. For example, JF uses commercially ered to different patients. Everyone is charged a fixed available, inexpensive ovens for such specialized tasks as rate per surgery of $1,500 — one-thirtieth the $45,000 shaping plastic pipes. The raw materials for each pros- that a typical U.S. hospital might charge, and one-third thetic total about $12.50. of the $4,500 that a top-line hospital in India would Breakthrough innovators are willing to pay more in charge. Even so, many patients cannot afford this sur- fixed costs (like those for equipment) if it means lowered gery; thus, with the help of the ICICI Bank Ltd. (India’s variable costs over time. NH buys digital X-ray second-largest private bank) and the state government of machines that store images in computer files; the extra Karnataka, NH designed a health insurance plan for the cost is justified by the eliminated costs of X-ray film, poor, selling it to entire villages at one time, at a cost of storage of old images, and transport of images to remote 20 cents per person per month. More than 2 million locations. NH also recruited a local manufacturer to subscribers belong to the scheme. produce its own sutures customized for each doctor at The surgeries are designed with whatever elements $90 each, compared with mass-produced imported are necessary to allow NH to meet the price consumers sutures at $200. Similarly, Aravind produces its own can afford and still make a profit. This “consumer-gen- intraocular lenses (used in cataract surgery) for $3 each, erated” approach represents a big change for most man- instead of importing them for $60 to $100 each. The agers, particularly in health-care institutions. They are quality is so good that Aravind now exports 50 percent  of its production to the United States and other countries. produce excellent results because they do nothing but To accomplish this kind of cost reduction, providers read images, as many as 200 per day. In most facilities, must be willing to look outside conventional industry as Dr. Shetty notes, “Echocardiogram tests on children structures. For example, most Indian hospitals pay the are conducted by senior pediatric cardiologists. same prices as their American or European counterparts However, there are very few pediatric cardiologists in for machines and devices like stents, heart valves, and India, and they are required for other tasks: interven- pacemakers. Yet the technology behind much of this tions and managing children before and after the sur- equipment is often rudimentary by today’s standards. gery. So we created a parallel team of echo-technicians, EKG, X-ray, and CT scan technologies are all more than nongraduates to whom we give extensive training. They 40 years old; their cost is kept high because there are work from morning till evening every day, with a lot of only a few suppliers. Using software and manufacturing passion, because this occupation has given them a new capabilities available in India today, innovative medical status in society. Of course, senior doctors supervise facilities are encouraging entrepreneurs to enter the their work. But because they are so specialized and medical instrumentation and supply business. The early attentive, it is not uncommon for us to detect an ab- results suggest that Western medical equipment manu- normality of the heart during an echocardiogram con- facturers will soon face severe competition from Indian ducted by a technician, when it was missed in other “format invaders” — new entrepreneurs using their cost institutions by cardiologists.” features business models advantages to reframe the value proposition of an estab- 5. Workflow. In a typical hospital, a cardiac surgeon lished global industry. admits the patient, orders tests, synthesizes the resulting 4. Talent Leverage. Operating amid a scarcity of information, plans the surgery, coordinates the team, and trained medical practitioners (India trains only 80 car- monitors postoperative care. The surgeon, in short, is diac surgeons per year, whereas the U.S. trains 8,000), treated like the conductor of a complex orchestra, with breakthrough innovators in Indian health care have had responsibility, as an individual, for the overall outcome. to focus on the skills they need rather than the creden- By contrast, at NH and Aravind, surgeons special- tials of their staff. They have stumbled on a critical ize and the team is responsible for outcomes. At insight: The more involved they become in building the Aravind, a surgeon moves from one operating table to skills of their people, the more effective they can be at another, focusing on just the procedure, while teams of providing world-class service while holding down costs. two nurse-practitioners remain at each table and oversee Surgical skills, in particular, are improved by fre- the patient’s care. Process design is critical: The quality quency of encounters. No surgeon can keep pace with of the outcome depends on the sophistication with all the subspecialties in the field. Therefore, by disaggre- which the total task has been disaggregated and specific gating the medical process, a medical institution can credentials and skills have been applied. Each member 7 make far better use of its higher-credentialed physicians. of the team knows what needs to be done. Individual Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, chairman of NH (and a participants — anesthesiologists, perfusionists, operating- well-respected surgeon), explains the logic this way: room nurses, and the surgeons themselves — are con- “The task of heart operations has been broken into stantly learning and using their reservoir of expertise to many tasks. Each is managed by a group of profession- make the appropriate adjustments to reflect the needs of als. One of my colleagues conducts most Dor pro- a particular patient in a specific context. They continu- cedures — a complex left ventricular remodeling ally improvise, like players in a jazz band. procedure that is done by only a few experts all over the 6. Customer Acquisition. The success of this busi- world. Since he has completed more than 250 of these, ness model is based on volume. Aravind, JH, and NH we all refer patients for this procedure to him. Similarly, must continually attract patients to travel to them. Thus everyone refers patients who need the Ross procedure to Aravind organizes about 1,400 one-day “eye camps” per me, since I have conducted more than 150 of them with year in villages across south India. Teams of doctors and strategy + business issue 44 zero mortality. Because we deal so frequently with so- paramedics trained by Aravind visit these camps and called rare procedures, it is not difficult to standardize screen the assembled patients to identify those who need them and consistently get good results.” surgery or other kinds of hospital-based treatment. Meanwhile, NH recruits women with high school These individuals are taken to the hospital, often free of educations and trains them as echocardiographers; they charge, with a relative accompanying them if necessary.  Western medical equipment manufacturers may soon face severe competition from Indian “format invaders” that will use cost advantages to reframe an industry. They are provided food and lodging near the hospital. share with a wide range of people. But the means of Nobody is denied access to care. Through this process, achieving that goal are never fully delineated; people features business models which has been gradually augmented by telemedical continually discover new ways of improving their ser- examinations, Aravind screens more than 1.6 million vice. The overall culture is one of service, humility, kind- people per year. This yields 240,000 surgeries. ness, and equality. Or as one doctor at Aravind put it, NH has an even wider catchment area: the Indian “All the doctors speak softly to the patients and nurses. states of Karnataka and West Bengal, covering more No shouting here. If a doctor behaves in an unaccept- than 60,000 square miles. NH is organizing cardiac care able manner, word goes around the hospital in no time, units at district medical facilities throughout these states, and the doctor will be in trouble. We believe in mutual with young doctors and paramedics who are trained in respect as a core value.” cardiac diagnosis and care. If the local experts detect any abnormality that they cannot treat, they can connect The Innovator’s Ecosystem with NH through a “tele-link” with two video monitors: It is easy to copy a particular innovation from any one for reviewing medical data and the other for dis- of these organizations. For example, another hospital cussing the patient’s condition with the patient and his might mandate a three-shift schedule for an expensive or her family. Even in this early stage of development, piece of equipment. But the savings will not be realized NH conducts more than 350 remote consultations per by any such measure alone. NH, Aravind, and JF suc- 8 month. If a patient needs surgery, he or she is advised to ceed because they continually innovate with a “sandbox” go to the main hospital in Bangalore. approach, and continually convert these innovations 7. Values and Organization. It is not possible to into disciplines and protocols that spread throughout understand the breakthrough innovations in these cases their entire organizations. Training and skill-building are without explicitly recognizing the importance of deeply integral parts of their operations. held values. Everyone who works at NH, for example, is Because they meet complex needs with specialized imbued with the same purpose: to provide all people, organizations, breakthrough innovators tend to discover rich and poor, with world-class care. that they cannot operate alone. They need to form Because they have these mutual aspirations, teams alliances with a group of interrelated organizations — in of people with diverse backgrounds and accomplish- effect, creating an ecosystem for breakthrough innova- ments can organize themselves to work together, with- tions. For example, the Aravind ecosystem includes five out needing expensive supervision. Young women from hospitals in the southern state of Tamil Nadu; a medical villages, trained as nurses, work side by side with research foundation; two research institutes; Aurolab (a Western-educated doctors at Aravind, designing their lens and suture manufacturing company); dozens of processes together. community outreach programs; and relationships with To provide direction in this type of self-organizing universities (including some in the U.S.), governments system, the goal must be clear, motivating, and easy to (at a variety of levels), and technology providers. NH  The bottom-of-the-pyramid customer base is the best friend an innovative company ever had, because of the limitations it forces. could not operate without its alliances with ICICI bank, tionary income provides sufficient distance from the with a wide range of low-cost suppliers, with state gov- current top-of-the-pyramid customer base to force insti- features business models ernments (which allow NH to use government hospital tutions to change their practices. premises to site its cardiac care units), and with the Rather than researching markets, they must Indian Space Research Organization to get satellite avail- immerse themselves in the lives of their target con- ability for telemedicine. The ability to develop these sumers. At the bottom of the pyramid, there are tough relationships to deliver high-quality care represents an challenges in access, awareness, affordability, and avail- important competitive advantage. ability, and only those who are grounded in the reality of India is not like Silicon Valley today, where infra- their consumers’ lives will understand their priorities. structure and relationships, including those with nearby The consumers themselves may not articulate their needs. universities, are already in place, and a new company They must accept constraints. They cannot do plugs into them. Here, they must be created from all things; they must do a few things very well. Many scratch. For example, only after it became clear that people have come to believe that creativity must be patients could not afford the $1,500 price tag for sur- unconstrained; in practice, however, breakthrough cre- gery did NH conceive of low-cost insurance; and only ativity requires an explicit acknowledgment of limits. then did the company approach the ICICI Bank. By They must not innovate in isolation. Break- playing the role of a core node in a larger network, NH throughs occur when there are clusters of innovations, 9 provided both an intellectual influence and a venue (the taking place continuously over time, in small experi- “sandbox”) in which others could take part. NH dictates ments from which companies learn rapidly, and in an the standards, controls the way people engage with its ecosystem involving many collaborators and partners. system, and maintains privileged access for itself. But it None of these changes will be possible without a does not own or control all the participating organiza- clear and unflagging commitment to a strategic intent. tions, nor does it need to. In the case of Indian health care, that is the intent of Companies in any industry, in any country, can serving all people with world-class quality at prices they adopt a “sandbox” approach to breakthrough innova- can afford. Guided by that value, the process of break- tion. But it requires accepting a few premises that are through innovation is a market development task; it is counterintuitive to many managers: very different from the challenge of serving an existing They must radically rethink the entire business market more efficiently. model — technology choices, distribution, pricing, Other industries may use other constraints to strategy + business issue 44 scale, workflow, and organization. Fine-tuning the achieve breakthrough innovation; for example, as com- existing business models will not work. That is why the panies become more aware of the problems of global cli- bottom-of-the-pyramid customer base is the best friend mate change, they are increasingly willing to innovate that a company focused on breakthrough innovations toward formerly “impossible” goals of generating no ever had. This unfamiliar market with very low discre- toxic waste, contributing no potentially damaging efflu- ents to the atmosphere, making efficient use of energy existing products and business models, start endeavors and natural resources, and restoring health to land and that often fail, and conclude from those failures that suc- features business models water. These external constraints now become resources cess was indeed impossible. for internal creativity. Managers who want breakthrough innovation need Or consider the clothing chain Zara, which turned to build a new capability for it in themselves. The the fashion industry’s supply chain model upside down. opportunity beckons. The bottom-of-the-pyramid con- Traditionally, clothing suppliers have forecast what cus- sumers are ready. All that remains is for the companies tomers will want, produced large lots, and provided to mobilize themselves accordingly. + them to retailers with a lead time of several months. Reprint No. 06306 Zara accepted the constraint of immediate responsive- ness. It makes small quantities of any item, and provides Resources the items only about 10 days after they leave the design- Gary Ahlquist, David Knott, and Philip Lathrop, “Prescription for er’s desk. The link between customer response and the Change,” s+b, Fall 2005, www.strategy-business.com/press/article/05301: next wave of design is extremely short, so Zara’s risks are Constraints on health care in the U.S. could push a different kind of vastly diminished. Its managers need not worry about “sandbox,” known as consumer-driven health care. misperceiving their audience. This frees them to put Joe Flower, “Five-Star Hospitals,” s+b, Spring 2006, www.strategy- business.com/press/article/06108: Not every innovative health-care facility excess capacity where it is most needed: in trucking, fab- is in India. 10 rication technology, and other aspects of its ecosystem. Tarun Khanna, V. Kasturi Rangan, and Merlina Manocaran, “Narayana Why do multinational corporations find it hard to Hrudayalaya Heart Hospital: Cardiac Care for the Poor,” Harvard embrace these approaches? The answer may lie in the Business Online case study #9-505-078, www.harvardbusinessonline.com: dominant logic of successful companies: the business More in-depth study of the NH story. practices that have been successful in the past, the mind- C.K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing, 2005): Strategic view set tied to those old practices, the internal evaluation of lowest-income consumers as a source of profitability for companies, systems that reinforce this mind-set, and the daunting and corporations as a source of dignity and choice; contains more detail problem of lack of experience in the new way of operat- on the JF and Aravind stories. ing. The zone of comfort drives away the zone of oppor- Bertrand Shelton, Thomas Hansson, and Nicholas Hodson: “Format tunity. If managers believe that 80 percent of humanity Invasions: Surviving Business’s Least Understood Competitive Upheavals,” s+b, Fall 2005, www.strategy-business.com/press/article/05305: The sand- is “too poor to pay for our products and services and is box equivalent in wealthier nations, its threat to incumbent companies, not part of our target market,” then a new offering at and a form of strategic response (including more on Zara). one-fiftieth the price of the current offering, made with- Narayana Hrudayalaya Web site, www.hrudayalaya.com: Comprehensive out sacrificing quality and at the same time ensuring the Web site describing the foundation, the associated institute, and the cardiac-focused hospital in Bangalore. company’s profitability, looks at first glance like an For more business thought leadership, sign up for s+b’s RSS feeds at impossible task. So those managers assume that the idea www.strategy-business.com/rss. will be impossible; instead, they make minor changes to strategy+business magazine is published by Booz & Company Inc. To subscribe, visit www.strategy-business.com or call 1-877-829-9108. For more information about Booz & Company, visit www.booz.com © 2006 Booz & Company Inc.