For the Most Success, Go to the Best Place to Plant the First Water Lilies

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For the Most Success, Go to the Best Place to Plant the First Water Lilies

Business people know that it makes all of the difference in the world what you do first. If you don’t have or cannot access the talent you need, results will always be poor. For that reason, many successful firms are founded by top performers with a new business model concept that their former employer showed no interest in pursuing. How does that lesson carry over into business model innovation?

Having arrived at the largest future pond of opportunity, there’s still a question of where you start your water lilies. If you put them all the water lilies together in one almost land-locked corner, you won’t do as well as if you plant them where they will have enough room to spread in all directions. The fewer water lilies you have to start with, the more important it is to put them in the right places for maximum healthy growth. For water lilies, a place near the middle of the pond which is protected from adverse weather and pollution will be optimal.

Business Objects realized this lesson when the company was founded in Paris by Mr. Bernard Liautaud, the firm’s chief executive officer. The company’s initial purpose was to make it easier for business people to use Oracle’s databases to get answers to their questions.

Initially, Business Objects did that by organizing the information to use common business terms that would make sense to business users. Having worked at Oracle in Paris prior to founding the company, Mr. Liautaud knew that software companies have to be able to operate worldwide and to function on any software platform.

As a result, he knew that the company would have to be transnationally based as much as possible. His requirement was to take the best that was available in different countries, and combine people and knowledge from these bases in ways that could produce the best results.

For example, he arranged to finance the company like a Silicon Valley start-up would have done. To take advantage of being based in Paris, he arranged venture capital from a variety of international sources including French, American, and Dutch firms.

He wanted Business Objects to have access to the contacts and advice from these firms, not just their money. This was a sharp break from what new French firms usually did, with the goal often being to help the founder keep 100 percent ownership. Business Objects was the first start-up French company to offer stock options to employees.

This approach enabled Business Objects to attract top high tech talent from all around the globe — executives, managers, sales people, and developers who had worked at many leading technology companies.

The company had a strong technical base in Paris, but one of the biggest market for its products would be in the United States. Mr. Liautaud soon opened substantial subsidiaries in the United States and the U.K., as well as offices located across Europe and in Asia-Pacific.

Then, moving himself to the United States helped the company become closer to the market while he continued nurturing his top French software development team. To reinforce this transnational perspective, the top management team combines American, French, and U.K. natives.

From this strong base, Business Objects was then able to take the next important steps in improving its business model. The first of these steps was making its software work with other database software platforms. The company designed a software architecture that made its offerings operate independently of all databases, so that it could be quickly installed and used — kind of a “Switzerland” for its open and heterogeneous technical strategy.

The second was to add query tools that allowed users to answer more of their own questions without the help of Information Technology professionals. Since then, the footprint has been expanded.

Initially, this was done by allowing all databases within a company to be queried. That important step was then expanded into allowing customers, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders query any of the databases within the company along with their own databases to answer questions. In a way, you could say that Business Objects has been building the information connections that will allow people to better apply the concepts developed in this book.

Only time can tell where this business model will evolve to, but it seems clear that it will call for quickly covering the pond with water lilies that have the practical effect of helping people get more valuable and timely information through and from their computers.

Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

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