Just taking the point about a PG person creating a product so far ahead of its time...
It is not about the market, it is about taking away market sometimes.
I had this conversation last week with this Quality Engineer from GM, while vacationinng in Mexico.
I mentioned that the chief engineer from Oldsmobile had this amazing production engine. Articles were written how it was the best production engine ever designed. You walked into his office in Lansing during the 80s and this engine was right there. It was never put into production. Went against Roger Smith's assembly plan of optimized production along each of GM's cars. Just plain stupidity. This quality engineer told me that Ford has this thing, where you stand behind your trunk and you can wave your foot under the car and the trunk opens -- when your hands are full of groceries -- and mentioned GM had this for years but never put it into the car.
On the other side, I remember someone telling me that Cablevision was shown "tivo" technology years before it came out but they thought it would destroy their service pricing model. Not that the technology wasn't good, but why destroy your money model before you have to.
And I bet many great money makers are not developed by PG because they are simple and cool -- like that Tingler -- which I bought 3. The best engineering designs on the assembly floor at Ford were done because the UAW VP made the engineers -- who usually just sat in their office to design the assembly -- come down to the floor and do the job so that they would know how stupid some of their designs were and how to optimize and create better quality.
Ren
