Owners who have insight into how a market and industry will evolve, and can then capitalize on that insight, can sometimes expand existing businesses or develop new ones as innovators. One example is Intuit, which noticed in the late 1990s that many small businesses were using its Quicken software, originally designed to help individual consumers manage their personal finances. The observation led to an important insight: most business-accounting software was too complex for the small business owner. So Intuit designed a new product for small business accounting, and within two years it had
...more
