WAY 51Use Others’ Solutions as Leverage: Finding best‐of‐breed partners helps teams get serious about success.
About the Way
Revolutions don't happen overnight, and they don't happen in a vacuum. In hindsight, countless actions and groups often contribute to what people later see as a single, world‐changing event. One way for a moonshot to succeed faster and better is to piggyback on others’ cutting‐edge solutions, especially for first delivery. From our experience, little has been written about taking this best‐of‐breed approach as an innovation strategy, although anecdotes abound. It is not the same tech discussion when combining best‐of‐breed software from different vendors or financial discussion for the classic build‐versus‐buy dilemma. Instead, a moonshot team should consider the option to seek and adopt emerging superior solutions that fit into their vision, similar to a sports team that swaps in new top players to boost their chances to win a tournament.
Consider the original iPod, the iconic portable music player released by Apple in 2001 that put “1,000 songs in your pocket.” In 2022, Apple discontinued the product after a 21‐year run as its longest running brand, selling an estimated 450 million iPods worldwide.1 Part of the story lost to time is that iPod's release relied heavily on two other startups to ship: Pixo and PortalPlayer. The use of the Pixo operating system in the iPod was never formally announced, although first‐generation iPods “About iPod” display ...
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