Image via WikipediaSuch is the question that Friedman is asking in this great piece if the us government should save detroit Op-Ed Columnist - How to Fix a Flat - NYTimes.com. The lack of money to do innovation is what is causing Detroit's demise that's what the auto industry is saying anyway. Not so Mr. Friedman says, it's just that they don't know how to innovate altogether. They should innovate less on the marketing gimmicks like 1.99$-a-gallon gasoline for a year and more on building fuel efficient cars for a start. Looking back it's not as if we haven't known about peak oil for a while, so it's inxcusable on GM and Detroit in general to not have been more serious about it. So it goes.
On the other hand remembering the book Innovator's Dilemma it's logical why GM for example would not be more serious about fuel efficient cars. How so Fred? Well the theory of this book is that in most companies what drives innovation is the need of your customers, not the need to the blue ocean, the non consummers. So what - well existing customers have their own needs in mind, and GM's golden goose was SUV, and as such they innovated to sell more SUVs, because their consummers were demanding innovation in SUV. Had they stopped and looked at the non consummers of SUV, they would have found something else, potentially much bigger and better aligned with our time - but no they rode the wave as much and as long as they could. GM never made it to a radically new product because their best people were busy innovating on the product with an end in sight but making money the SUV. They never floored the pedal to the metal on the electric cars, or fuel cells because the SUV money was so good.
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