the Raconteur: 2013

Word

For more than a century the Swiss dominated the watch industry. In 1968, they commanded 65 percent of the world market and 80 percent of the profits. Within ten years those figures had plummeted. By 1978, Japan had assumed world dominance, and the Swiss held just 10 percent of the watch market. This led to a three-year process of laying off 50,000 of their 65,000 watch workers. So what happened? In 1967 the Japanese were open-minded and the Swiss weren't. In that year Swiss researchers invented the quartz watch. The Swiss watch manufacturers rejected it because it had no gears or springs. In short, it wasn't made like a watch is "supposed" to be made. The Swiss were so certain the quartz watch would never sell, they didn't even protect their invention. They displayed it at the Annual Watch Congress in 1967. The open-minded Japanese saw the potential of a watch that is one thousand times more accurate than conventional watches and went from zero percent of the world watch market to global dominance in less than a decade.

* Paradigms, Joel Barker Video

the Raconteur

Monday, April 15, 2013

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...Edgar Allan Poe

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