Strategic Innovation: The Definitive Guide to Outlier Strategies

5. A Quirky Way to Product Innovation

Ben Kaufman started to break rules when he had his parents remortgage their house, just before high-school graduation, so that he could travel to China and find a manufacturer to produce his latest invention—mophie, a new type of headphone. Eventually, a quite successful ending for mophie’s Shenzen adventure rewarded Kaufman’s effort and sparked his enthusiasm for venturing into more products and raising funding from investors, yet, mophie turned out to be also a learning experience for Kaufman. He grasped how hard it is for a single inventor to take an idea for a new product, no matter how good it is, to the shelves of a retail store. Moreover, he learned that something had to be done in order to change ...