Yu, Leap

Legally or illegally, companies have for centuries copied the intellectual property of their competitors and encroached on their market share. One has only to think back to the commercial espionage of Francis Cabot Lowell, who in 1810-11, while strolling through dozens of British cotton mills, memorized critical details of mechanized textile manufacturing. Using this information, his Boston Manufacturing Company and eventually mills throughout New England took the growing American mass market away from British textile exporters.

Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (PublicAffairs/Hachette, 2018) by Howard Yu is, in the best sense of the word, a story book. It tells tales of woe as well as tales of resilience. These case studies all have a point, but, even if they didn’t, they would be fascinating in and of themselves.

Wu, a professor at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, believes that the key to outlasting copycat competition is to leap. “Pioneers must move across knowledge disciplines, to leverage or create new knowledge on how a product is made or a service is delivered. Absent such efforts, latecomers will always catch up.”

Wu articulates five principles necessary for making a successful leap: (1) understand your firm’s foundational knowledge and its trajectory, (2) acquire and cultivate new knowledge disciplines, (3) leverage seismic shifts, (4) experiment to gain evidence, and (5) dive deep into execution. These principles, as stated, are somewhat telegraphic, but Wu develops them through compelling case studies from companies spanning the globe: for instance, Steinway (an example of what not to do in the face of competition, in its case, from Yamaha), Procter & Gamble, Novartis, WeChat, Recruit Holdings, and John Deere.

Leap is the kind of book that everyone with an interest in business can profit from. And here’s a lesson that everybody, active investors/traders in particular, can profit from. “Successful executives often exhibit a bias for action. But it’s even more important to separate the noise from the signal that actually pinpoints the glacial movement around us. Listening carefully to the right signals requires patience and discipline. Seizing a window of opportunity, which means not necessarily being the first mover but the first to get it right, takes courage and determination. To leap successfully is to master these two seemingly contradictory abilities. The discipline to wait and the determination to drive, in balanced combination, often pay off handsomely.”