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VIEWPOINT
T omo rr owl and
KEVIN COUPE
FOUNDER,
MORNINGNEWSBEAT.COMI recently had the opportunity to attend a
presentation at which Marc Tarpenning,
one of the co-founders of Tesla, talked about
the company’s early development process…
and there were two things he said that really
grabbed my attention and struck me as
relevant to pretty much any business facing
21st century competitive realities.
First, there was his observation that in
creating the Tesla there were far greater
problems than developing the batteries that
propel them.
“That was just science,” he said, arguing they
always knew they could work that part of it
out. Unlike co-founder Elon Musk’s other
business, Tarpenning said, “this wasn’t
rocket science.”
No, the bigger problem quite literally had to
do with the nuts and bolts of the business.
They could design the batteries and design
the car…but then they actually had to find
someone who could do things like make
a door, and a rear-view mirror, and all the
other stuff that goes into a physical car.
That was a lot harder…until
they discovered something
about traditional car companies
– they don’t make that stuff
either. It ends up the only thing
traditional car companies
really make is the engine, and
everything else is outsourced.
So, all Tesla had to do was
network, network and network
some more until they could find
outside companies that could
meet their standards, and were
willing to work on the small-
production scale Tesla had in
mind. Which they did.
Listening to the ruminations of a Tesla co-
founder, who, it could be argued, is ideally
positioned to talk about business disruption,
was one of the real benefits of attending the
recent GMDC Retail Tomorrow Conference
in Silicon Valley.
It was one of the most provoking such
meetings that I can remember, and GMDC
set a benchmark for what a technology
conference should be.
I always thought I was a reasonably
enlightened and imaginative guy, until I
spent time on the Google campus and at the
Plug And Play “accelerator” that provides
infrastructure for startup companies and
plays matchmaker between them and major
companies that serve as their partners.
(Many years ago, we were told, one of the
first companies to work with Plug And Play
was a little entrepreneurial effort you might
have heard of. It was called Google.)
I was simultaneously humbled and energized
because there were so many business lessons.
Tracie Maffei, who runs the retail practice
at Google, told us during our visit to the
Google campus that there are certain basic
realities that businesses have to understand
and ignore at their own peril.
“Millennials represent the most diverse,
educated, socially conscious and tech-savvy
group in history…they’ve never used a fax,
never used a rotary phone, never listened to
a cassette tape,” she said.
Technology can change how business interacts
with consumers, but there is an epiphany that must
precede the tech choices that businesses must make.
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