Why do most mergers fail? Mostly because they are top down, not bottom up. CEOs and senior managers see synergies and benefits that matter little, if at all, to consumers. Daimler thought that injecting German engineering into Chrysler cars would make Chrysler customers happier. It didn’t. They couldn’t care less. It might have benefited Daimler to have done some serious design research among consumers before jumping into the merger.

I too would bet that when asking whether customers would like more (if necessary, yes, german) car engineering in their cars they would almost always voice a loud and convincing “yes, i will”. So the focus (when resarching business model innovations of all kind, btw) is clear, it isn’t market research or any hidden kind of assumption – it’s more asking the right questions. Following design thinking as a guideline (and leveraging flexible experiments i.e. prototypes mock-ups etc.) is an interesting option from this perspective as well …

Want a sneak peek of tomorrow’s technology? Look to generals, gamers, and fashionistas, where the real innovations will come from

Interesting how he views the big and huge organization military as kind of hothouse and testbed for innovation, I do agree in some parts … like e.g.:

Think of the Defense Dept. as an enterprise, with millions of employees, operations throughout the world, and a business that epitomizes the term mission-critical. In areas ranging from real-time collaboration to knowledge management to sensor networks, the military is pressing technology vendors to push the envelope, spawning innovations that will diffuse to other markets

However, innovation is still pushed by external organizations … and at an enormous cost … analogies for normal companies are hence limited.

Still the article is worthwile, noting that interesting things may occur at the intersection of these three groups …

SYNERGY BURST. Particularly interesting innovations occur when guns, games, and style intersect. [...] the military is extremely active in using massively multiplayer online games as training, recruiting, simulation, and collaboration tools.

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if you’re interested in the business of technology, you would be wise to pay attention to a different set of customers: the generals, gamers, and fashionistas. When it comes to innovation, their decisions may be the ones that matter.

Seems reasonable to me, innovative and creative business models may emerge … so you better watch this peculiar focus area.