The Next Next Common Sense
that instead of pumping it away into runoffs, JR East should bottle and market it as premium mineral water. His idea was implemented, and soon the water appeared on the mar- ket under the brand name Oshimizu. Within a very short time the water became so popular that JR East installed vending machines for it on every one of its nearly one thousand platforms in Tokyo and eastern Japan. Today, this approach has evolved further with JR East leveraging data from vending machine sales to optimize product placement and develop- ment of new beverage varieties. By analyzing purchasing patterns across different station locations and times of day, they've created a feedback loop that informs their product development pipeline. What began as a serendipitous discovery of good-tasting water has transformed into a sophisticated data-driven business unit that consistently introduces suc- cessful new products. Think of the building blocks necessary to make this story happen. The engineers recognized the need to be rid of the water. Serendipity intervened and one of them tasted it. That taste would have been for naught, but for a critical building blockâemployees felt free to make even "unusual" sugges- tions to management if the suggestions seemed to be coherent with JR East. Central management was prepared to deal with the suggestion that the waste water could be sold. More than that, they were ready with a consumer marketing approach that did not involve selling rail travel. Their advertising department knew what images would be appealing precisely because of the travel opportunities they normally sold. Central manage- ment, knowing that they were in the transportation business and that consumer sales of beverages was a different field, had the building blocks in place of "let go" and "allow expertise to flourish." As a result, they were prepared to establish a separate subsidiary to carry out the entire task, and ultimately to become a water company all its own. Notice that the building blocks were already there and that JR East was able to recombine them to create something both new and profitable. Compare this to IBM's experience with the ubiquitous consumer barcode. More than 15 years before RCA made a splash with the first trade
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