"Take a bit of the future and make it your present."
When we aren't satisfied with the present of our company, what better thing to do than the admonition by Andy Grove than to take that part of the future you know is going to happen and bring it to the now.
If we don't like the present, than recreate and form it to the one you want, as far as the company goes. This means that we need to know the market we serve better than anyone else does.
The benefit of the unique ability to do this is you can take the market out of your competitors hands and not only become the market leader, but a new market entirely. Think of Steve Jobs when he made the iPod and began the monetized, downloadable music revolution.
He understood the future that people wanted by knowing the present better than others. He saw where it was going and responded ... and he was right.
The secret in taking something from the future is in not being too far ahead of yourself. The move that will make a difference is the one right in front of our eyes, not the one five years out. To successfully do this, it must be the next step forward, but ahead of others.
The move by Jobs and Apple (AAPL) into digital music downloads was the obvious move to make, while others were panicking and fighting against what was happening.
If Jobs had attempted something else, it wouldn't have made any sense. People were on the edge of wanting to go online and get music. If Jobs had done something else, he would have bypassed the next step and would have failed. He knew what the market wanted next and brought that to the present.
This is why so much that's being tinkered with doesn't work many times: it's introduced ahead of its time. The true business geniuses aren't those that create new products or services, that's only creativity. Those that are business geniuses know what to create that will fit into the current demand of the market.
That sounds easy to do, but look around you and see if it's really easy to do. What it is, is easy to understand - it's much harder to do.
The doing is connected to knowing what where the market is going, before anyone else does. With Jobs as an example again, think of what the market would have been like if he hadn't also seen the need for mobility in relationship to downloadable music. It wasn't only the desire for instant gratification that made it successful, it was knowing that people also wanted to be able to carry their music with them wherever they went. The combination was what he saw, that was what brought the future to the present.
Other Andy Grove Resources:
Andy Grove's Rational Exuberance
The Digital Age . . . driven by the passion of Intel's Andrew Grove
The History and Influence of Andy Grove
Andy Grove enters new post-Intel role as activist capitalist
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