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OUTSIDE SOURCES

Sensing Opportunities Externally

Innovators work inside big established firms like Microsoft, Pfizer, and Honda and in start-ups from Shanghai to Silicon Valley. Their efforts improve their firms’ competitive prospects. But opportunities for innovation also bubble outside firms in places like university labs and hobbyists’ garages. Thus, in addition to generating opportunities internally, innovative firms must also sense them externally.

Consider the success story of the energy drink Red Bull. The Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz created an impressive business with sales of 3.5 billion cans of the sweet, caffeinated drink ...

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