Co-Opetition - Adam M. Brandenburger [26]
Let’s test-drive this last idea. The added value of cars is huge; we can hardly imagine life without them. But does that mean Ford has an equally huge added value? No. Take away Ford and you still have General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan, and many other carmakers. What we wouldn’t have is the Ford Explorer or the Ford Mustang. That’s a much more limited sense in which Ford has added value—and a much more limited added value for Ford.
What Is Your Added Value?
It’s always tempting to apply a new theory to one’s everyday life. Thus, you can ask: what’s my added value? But be aware that this is an uncomfortable question to entertain. You have to envisage what the world would look like without you. That’s worse than reading your own obituary. It’s like reading the newspaper one year later and seeing how the world got along without you.
In fact, some people work hard to keep their added value hidden. We all know people who refuse to stop work and take a vacation. They tell themselves—and anyone else who’ll listen—that if they go away, the world will stop turning. If so, they really do have a large added value. More likely than not, the world would keep on spinning. Finding out that they’re not irreplaceable after all is too much of a risk to take. So they keep working.
To look back and figure out what your added value was in some situation is the ultimate nihilistic experience. It’s like imagining what the world would be like if you’d never existed at all. That’s what Jimmy Stewart got to do in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.
In this 1946 story directed by Frank Capra, Jimmy Stewart plays George Bailey, banker, husband, and father. He has married his high school sweetheart (Donna Reed) and settled in his hometown of Bedford Falls to run his father’s savings and loan business. George, who had dreamed of traveling the globe, feels trapped in his limited world. One day near Christmas, George’s absentminded uncle takes the savings and loan’s cash deposit to the bank but loses it before he reaches the teller. The evil Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), who owns the bank, finds the cash but doesn’t return it to George. With the savings and loan effectively wiped out, George fears that Mr. Potter will get his long-awaited opportunity to take over the business and, with it, the whole town. George falls into a deep depression and contemplates suicide. But then Clarence, an “Angel Second Class” on a mission to earn his “wings,” comes down from heaven to save George. Clarence shows George what the world would have been like if he had never been born. What George sees is a bleaker place: his life has had a high added value. His outlook on life reaffirmed, George proclaims that he wants to live, and a Merry Christmas to all.
We’re going to do the George Bailey experiment many times in this book, both retrospectively and prospectively. We’ll ask how the fortunes of the other players in the game would have been different had one of the players been absent. That’s the experiment looking backward. We’ll also do the experiment looking forward: how the future fortunes of the other players in the game would be affected if one of the players were to leave.
George Bailey had doubts about his added value, but Jimmy Stewart’s added value was assured. Take him out of the picture, and It’s a Wonderful Life wouldn’t have been the same.
Established movie stars have enormous added value. That’s a problem for the studios, which make the greatest returns on movies that don’t have stars but still take off—Rocky; Home Alone; Ace Ventura, Pet Detective; and Speed. But the luck can’t be repeated. The previously unknown actors and actresses—Sylvester Stallone, Macaulay Culkin, Jim Carrey, Sandra Bullock—are suddenly stars. The next time around, they have to be paid in line with their newfound added value.
When Macaulay Culkin was picked for Home Alone, he was just one of many aspiring child