Strategic Market Management, 10th Edition

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Creating New Businesses

The most effective way to cope with change is to help create it.

—I. W. Lynett

When I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

—E. B. White

The unexpected is the best source of inspiration.

—Peter Drucker

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which passed Hertz in sales during the 1990s, had sales of $10.1 billion in 2008 compared with Hertz's $6.7 billion and was much more profitable. Enterprise, formed in 1957 in St. Louis, focused on the off-airport market, catering to leisure travelers and (more important) to insurance companies that needed to supply a car to customers whose car was being repaired, a market that Enterprise created and nurtured. With a signature “We'll pick you up” offer, its inexpensive off-airport sites were run by entrepreneur managers motivated in part by a bonus system tied to customer satisfaction. Not until the late 1980s when it was already nipping at the heels of Hertz did Enterprise begin national advertising and get on the radar screen of its competitors, who were all after the prime market of business travelers who wanted a car at the airport.

Cirque du Soleil started in 1984 with a few street performers. A traditional circus with animals, trapeze artists, clowns, three-ring entertainment, and tents was oriented to families with children. Competitors were always tweaking the acts and setting. Cirque du Soleil (“We reinvented the ...