PRUEBAS

We need a strong motivation to accelerate through the trials and errors inherent in cultivating a newmarket.Of course, the danger in making this unequivocal call for spinning out an independent company is thatsome managers might apply this remedy indiscriminately, viewing skunkworks and spinoffs as ablanket solution—an industrial-strength aspirin that cures all sorts of problems. In reality, spinning outis an appropriate step only when confronting disruptive innovation. The evidence is very strong thatlarge, mainstream organizations can be extremely creative in developing and implementing sustaininginnovations. 21 In other words, the degree of disruptiveness inherent in an innovation provides a fairlyclear indication of when a mainstream organization might be capable of succeeding with it and when itmight be expected to fail.In this context, the electric vehicle is not only a disruptive innovation, but it involves massivearchitectural reconfiguration as well, a reconfiguration that must occur not only within the productitself but across the entire value chain. From procurement through distribution, functional groups willhave to interface differently than they have ever before. Hence, my project would need to be managedas a heavyweight team in an organization independent of the mainstream company. This organizationalstructure cannot guarantee the success of our electric vehicle program, but it would at least allow myteam to work in an environment that accounts for, rather than fights, the principles of disruptiveinnovation.NOTES1. In 1996, the state government delayed implementation of this requirement until the year 2002, inresponse to motor vehicle manufacturers’ protests that, given the performance and cost of the vehiclesthey had been able to design, there was no demand for electric vehicles.2. An excellent study on this subject is summarized in Dorothy Leonard-Barton, Wellsprings ofKnowledge (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995).3. This information was taken from an October 1994 survey conducted by The Dohring Company andquoted by the Toyota Motor Sales Company at the CARB (California Air Resources Board) Workshopon Electric Vehicle Consumer Marketability held in El Monte, California, on June 28, 1995.4. This information was provided by Dr. Paul J. Miller, Senior Energy Fellow, W. Alton JonesFoundation, Inc., Charlottesville, Virginia. It was augmented with information from the followingsources: Frank Keith, Paul Norton, and Dana Sue Potestio, Electric Vehicles: Promise and Reality(California State Legislative Report [19], No. 10, July, 1994); W. P. Egan, Electric Cars (Canberra,Australia: Bureau of Transport Economics, 1974); Daniel Sperling, Future Drive: Electric Vehicles andSustainable Transportation (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995); and William Hamilton, ElectricAutomobiles (New York: McGraw Hill Company, 1980).5. Based on the graphs in Figure 10.1, it will take a long time for disruptive electric vehicle technologyto become competitive in mainstream markets if future rates of improvement resemble those of thepast. The historical rate of performance improvement is, of course, no guarantee that the future rate canbe maintained. Technologists very well might run into insurmountable technological barriers. What wecan say for sure, however, is that the incentive of disruptive technologists to find some way to engineeraround such barriers will be just as strong as the disincentive that established car makers will feel tomove down-market. If present rates of improvement continue, however, we would expect the cruisingrange of electric cars, for example, to intersect with the average range demanded in the mainstreammarket by 2015, and electric vehicle acceleration to intersect with mainstream demands by 2020.169