Word: breakthrough
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...joke. "It should not have worked," Grier says. Yet it did - where earlier optical traps could capture a maximum of two substances, this cheap plastic one split the laser beam into 16 parts which, when properly harnessed, gave them the potential to trap 16 separate substances. It was the breakthrough they had been after for years. "We were stunned,'' Grier recalls...
...Rutan, the raised eyebrows proved he was on the right track. "If you don't have a consensus that it's nonsense," says Rutan, "you don't have a breakthrough." He showed the design to Paul Allen, the reclusive, science-fiction-loving co-founder of Microsoft. "After a few minutes with Burt," says Allen, "you realize just how innovative he is." Allen, the fifth richest guy on the planet, agreed to fund Rutan's X Prize venture...
That said, a number of the good-to-great companies did undertake significant acquisitions, but--and this is the key point--they did so in circumstances that clearly differed from those of the mediocre comparisons. First, they never tried to use a big acquisition to ignite a breakthrough but attempted to accelerate greatness only after (usually years after) they had already achieved a breakthrough. Second, their best acquisitions met three litmus tests: 1) the acquisition must accentuate what the company can do better than any other company in the world; 2) the acquisition must enhance a powerful pre-existing economic...
...Ichise can take much of the credit for this breakthrough. Returning to Japan in 1997 after a stint in Hollywood, he discovered a clique of talented young directors, including Ringu's Hideo Nakata and Ju-on's Takashi Shimizu, absorbed with making straight-to-video ghost stories. Working with budgets of about $10,000 per one-hour segment forced Asian horror's avant-gardists to rely on suspense instead of special effects. "With horror, bigger budgets don't necessarily mean better movies," says Ichise. "This group was making terrifying stuff on a shoestring. The Asian horror-movie boom that everybody...
...prove that E.U. diplomacy backed by U.S. power can resolve the dangerous standoff over Iran's ongoing efforts to enrich uranium, a process which the U.S. and Israel insist is a bid for nuclear arms. Last week some E.U., Iranian and U.N. officials were hailing as a potential breakthrough an agreement in which Iran would suspend its enrichment activities in exchange for additional nuclear technology and guaranteed fuel deliveries for a civilian nuclear capability. But at week's end, the optimism was fading. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that there had been no breakthrough, and French negotiators said they...