Business aviation has one very systemic problem that it cannot get past…Lack of vision!
Here is a short tale about what the lack of vision looks like when applied to business in general. However, this particular tale relates exactly to the business of business aviation, and just how antiquated and out of touch Business Aviation really is.
This is about one decision maker that had no idea about what he was doing, business aviation has thousands.
The executive: William Orton president of the Western union Telegraph Company in 1876.
Background: In 1876, Western Union had a monopoly on the telegraph, the world’s most advanced communications technology. This made it one of Americas’ richest and most powerful companies, “with $41 million in capital and the pocketbooks of the financial world behind it. “So, when Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a wealthy Bostonian approached Orton with and offer to sell the patent for a new invention Hubbard had helped fund, Orton treated it as a joke. Hubbard was asking for $100,000.
Decision: Orton bypassed Hubbard and drafted a response directly to the inventor. “Mr. Bell,” he wrote, “after careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities…What use could this company make of an electric toy?”
Impact: The invention, the telephone, would have been perfect for Western Union. The company had a nationwide network of telegraph wires in place, and the inventor, Alexander Graham Bell had shown that his telephones worked quite well on the telegraph lines. All the company had to do was hook the telephones up to its existing lines and it would have had the world’s first nationwide telephone network in a matter of months.
Instead, Bell kept the patent and in a few decades his telephone company, “renamed American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), had become the largest corporation in America…The Bell patent offered to Orton for a measly $100,000 – became the single most valuable parent in history.”
Ironically, less that two years after turning Bell down, Orton realized the magnitude of his mistake and spent millions of dollars challenging Bell’s parents while attempting to build his own telephone networks (which he was ultimately forced to hand over to Bell). Instead of going down in history as one of the architects of the telephone age, he is instead remembered for having made one of the worse decisions in American business history. (Thanks to BRI)
Why are we telling those in the business aviation space this tale, because business aviation is “in total the William Orton of today’s business aviation business”. DON’T BE THAT GUY!
Time to Accept the facts and learn that there is a better way. Oh yes, there is a better way, and we have it. However, there will be only one beneficiary of this opportunity.
Contact at https://airpwr.com/contact-us/
