BUILT FOR GROWTH Expanding Your Business Around the Corner or Across the Globe

Chapter 16. Innovation as the Path to Growth

“PUSH THE ENVELOPE” is a common phrase today in business, meaning to take a concept or business practice to its outer limits, but few people know its original sense, which involved the testing of high-speed aircraft. Aircraft performance is often depicted in graph form on an X and Y axis. For example, power is measured against altitude or weight against balance. The predicted performance frequently takes the shape of a rectangular box—the shape of a letter envelope. In the early days of high-performance aircraft, engineers could not predict with any exactitude how new aircraft designs would handle, so “pushing the envelope” meant to fly at the edge of or beyond the known or theoretical capability of ...