Strategic Planning Archive

In 1933, baseball card collectors were frustrated. For some reason, they found it impossible to complete their Goudy Gum 240-card set. No matter how many packages of cards they purchased, they failed to find card number #106, which featured Napoleon Lajoie. Enterprising collectors who wrote Goudy and voiced their frustrations were rewarded by receiving the Lajoie card in the mail. All other collectors were out of luck. What was behind the mystery of the missing Lajoie card?

Note: This is Part I in a three-part series on The Perfect Business Model. Click here for Part II, and Part III Authentic, hand-crafted Persian rugs always include intentional imperfections. They are said to be, “Perfectly Imperfect, and Precisely Imprecise.” The same is true with many crafts and architecture created in Muslim cultures. I am not a Muslim scholar, but a layman’s interpretation of this tradition of intentional errors is that it arises from the belief that attempting to emulate God’s perfection is sinful.   Fortunately, entrepreneurs need not fear running afoul of this sin when crafting their business plans, because all of them are inherently imperfect and imprecise.

This is part III of a three part series. Click here for Part I and Part II John Fitch was first. He spent the majority of his adult life fruitlessly attempting to capitalize on the novelty and uniqueness of his invention. Unable to raise funds from wealthy individuals, he solicited $300 from a hodgepodge of small businessmen, including tavern owners, grocers and physicians. In a matter of months, he developed technology that was superior to that created by the world’s leading scientist over the prior 15-years, despite his lack of a formal education. He debuted his technology in Philadelphia at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It exceeded his expectations and thrilled those who witnessed it, including a number of prominent Founding Fathers. However, he was still unable to secure adequate funding to commercialize his technology. Fitch spent the next three years traveling the country repairing clocks as a means of surviving, all the while saving money for the eventual launch his venture. In 1790, he began offering a service that eventually transformed world commerce and generated trillions of dollars of wealth. Unfortunately for Fitch, his adVenture folded 18-months after it began.  In 1798, at the age of 55, a frustrated, destitute Fitch scrimped together enough money to purchase a handful of opium pills, which he used to end his life. His suicide note was prophetic: “The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention, but no one will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention.”