The ability to scale up business is a defining quality of successful innovators. Early in his 40-year tenure leading Suzuki Motor, Osamu Suzuki established the company’s stake in India’s car market—which eventually grew to 40 percent. Profits generated from that market remain an integral part of Suzuki’s global annual revenues.
Cablevision founder Charles Dolan expanded his company’s customer base by creating Home Box Office. This paid-programming alternative with myriad entertainment options offered something that viewers in areas with good, free TV reception couldn’t get elsewhere at the time.
Surgeon Albert Starr teamed up with hydraulics engineer Lowell Edwards to apply the same mechanism used in fuel pumps to the human heart. The duo’s ability to replicate that functionality produced the first successful artificial heart valve. Today, roughly 800,000 Starr-Edwards valves have been implanted worldwide, preserving lives and hope.
