Chris Zook, of Bain & Company, a consultancy, urges companies to keep potential failures close to their core business perhaps by introducing existing products into new markets or new products into familiar markets.
We start our world tour in Europe, but not the familiar markets of Germany or the U.K. Tiny Austria is booming, and MSCI Austria Index iShares offers an easy way to participate.
We can perhaps lose sight of this at home, dulled by the familiar marketing gush.
It was venturing outside its familiar market, for personal computers, into the fiercely competitive field of consumer electronics.
It is the iconic American corporations that constitute the familiar market indices, and it is those indices that define professional investment success.
From the 1960s onwards, Wally Olins, who has died aged 83, was Britain's most articulate and effective proselytiser for the new commercial religion of branding, and for the profession of branding consultant, something to be distinguished from the familiar "marketing communications" trades such as advertising, PR and even design.
With so many people willing to pay out of pocket -- most insurance companies do not pay for the procedure, because they regard it as "cosmetic" -- to be rid of contacts or glasses, Lasik surgeons have turned to the familiar marketing tools: celebrity testimonials, billboards, radio and television advertisements, telemarketing.
Coinsetter, on the other hand, is one of many that see opportunity in applying familiar market practices to the wild, wacky and virtual world of Bitcoin.
While it's somewhat unusual to see an initial round of funding like this come from one backer, it's a somewhat familiar market for Accel, which has also backed online marketplaces like Etsy and 99 Designs.
First the Internet and now e-readers are changing those familiar market dynamics for everyone.
More familiar emerging markets have lost momentum recently, but the MSCI frontier-markets index has kept climbing.As the name suggests, however, frontier markets are not for the faint-hearted.
