Forty members of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club—all clad in identical black leather jackets emblazoned with a skull over crossed pistons—maintained a tight formation as they rode their British-made Triumph 650s into a small California town. Sherriff Harry Bleeker prepared for trouble, while his brother Frank, who owned the town’s bar, prepared for business and put more beer on ice. Both men were right. Within the span of a few hours, Johnny Strabler, the taciturn leader of the Black Rebels, organized a drag race down the town’s main road, hit on the sheriff’s daughter, and picked a fight with Chino, the leader of the Beatles, a rival club whose members rode Harley-Davidsons.

The fight escalated when a local, frustrated by the sheriff’s hesitation to intervene, drove his car into the crowd of bikers. The bikers dragged him out of the car, which they flipped over. At that point, Sheriff Bleeker intervened and arrested Chino, setting in motion a chain of events in which the Beatles cut the town’s phone lines, the Black Rebels trashed a local beauty parlor, and a crowd of local vigilantes seized a biker. The day culminated in a violent showdown between the bikers and the townspeople, in which one local resident hurled a tire iron into the spokes of a passing Triumph, which skidded out of control and killed an elderly bystander. Shortly after the death, the county sheriff arrived with a phalanx of police cars to restore order.

The Black Rebels and the Beatles fought not on the streets of a small California town, but in the 1953 film The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando as Johnny Strabler and Lee Marvin as Chino. Loosely based on a 1951 incident, the film exaggerated a Fourth of July clash between bikers and the residents of Hollister, California, a conflict that was in fact free from violence.¹ Despite its inaccuracies, The Wild One reinforced Americans’ stereotypes of motorcycles in the 1950s as big, dirty, and dangerous—an apt description of their riders, in the eyes of many. Beneath the stereotype lay an element of truth. Most of the motorcycles sold the late 1950s were large, with engines that displaced at least 500 cc of air and fuel, and were used for leisure rather than basic transportation. In the late 1950s, British producers, including Triumph, Villiers, and Norton, dominated the motorcycle market with their outsized bikes.

Against this backdrop, Honda Motor—the established leader in the Japanese motorcycle market—entered the U.S. market for the first time in the summer of 1959.² Within fifteen years, Honda led the industry, accounting for 43 percent of all motorcycles sold in 1974. Its market share ranged from just under one-third in larger motorcycles to over 60 percent in smaller machines. Honda’s rapid ascent paved the way for Japanese competitors Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki to enter. By the mid-1970s, these four Japanese producers accounted for nearly nine of every ten motorcycles sold in the United States. The rapid ascent of Honda triggered a shakeout among incumbent motorcycle makers, with British producers, including BSA, Excelsior, Greeves, Francis-Barnett, Norton, Panther, Royal Enfield, and Velocette, all hard hit.

MAPS AND GAPS

In an effort to salvage what remained of the English motorcycle industry, the British secretary of state for industry commissioned a consulting group to analyze Honda’s rise. In 1975 the Boston Consulting Group presented a report that suggested Honda executives had drafted a long-term strategy to guide their U.S. market entry and then followed their mental map closely in the decade that followed. Honda conducted thorough market research, segmented the U.S. market, and identified an unfilled demand for small motorcycles, according to the report.³ To fill that demand, Honda crafted a systematic plan to win market share through low prices, aggressive marketing, and a novel distribution network. By increasing volume, the company drove down production costs, allowing further price reductions and market share gains. Honda implemented its strategy methodically, starting in California and advancing eastward over time. A Harvard Business School case study based on the report extolled Honda as a model of long-term planning.

Honda managers did follow a mental map when they entered the U.S. market, but it was the wrong map. When Kihachiro Kawashima, a thirty-nine-year-old Honda employee, relocated to Los Angeles in June 1959 to establish American Honda Motor Company, he drew on his previous experience to sketch a road map to navigate the U.S. market.⁴ Kawashima, the former head of sales for Honda Motor in Japan, knew that Toyota’s Toyopet Crown subcompact had bombed when introduced into the U.S. market a few years earlier. Kawashima concluded that small bikes, like Toyota’s small car, stood no chance in the U.S. market, although both were popular in Japan. Honda’s biggest bikes had the best chance of cracking the Wild One market. The Honda team decided to challenge European producers in the large-engine categories, target macho bikers, and sell through the existing distribution channels.

Honda executives started with a flawed map, but they also noticed where it diverged from reality and modified it along the way. They spotted the flaws in their map by exploring anomalies, or surprising outcomes that deviate from predictions. Common anomalies include initiatives that should work but don’t, initiatives that shouldn’t work but do, a surprising connection among unrelated events, an inexplicable competitive move, demand for a product never expected to sell, or events deemed unlikely or impossible. Such incongruities highlight discrepancies between a mental map and the underlying terrain. Sometimes discrepancies signal a shift that renders an existing map outmoded—recall the inability of Firestone managers to predict profitability. Other times they demonstrate that the map was wrong to begin with, as is often the case with start-up business plans. Either way, anomalies point out where a map is wrong.

Two anomalies showed the flaws in Honda’s map. Despite a concerted effort, the company managed to sell fewer than sixty of its large bikes each month, far short of their monthly sales goal of one thousand units. What should have sold didn’t. The team continued to promote the larger bikes and managed to peddle a few more units until April 1960, when the larger models began to leak oil, overheat, and seize up. Honda recalled the defective large bikes and sent them back to Japan, where engineers worked around the clock to simulate the failure and repair it. Without larger bikes to sell, Kawashima was forced to deviate from his map and push the low-priced Honda 50. Surprisingly, the small model flew out the door, and in less than a year it exceeded Honda’s aggressive sales targets. What shouldn’t have sold did.

People rarely discover anomalies through deliberate search. Most stumble upon them.⁵ Entrepreneurs, for example, often spot opportunities when they notice an unexpected gap between an industry map and shifting terrain. Professor Amar Bhidé surveyed the founders whose start-ups made the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing companies, and found that only 4 percent of entrepreneurs had identified a gap in the market through a process of deliberate search. Another 71 percent encountered them in their previous jobs, while a further 20 percent discovered them through serendipity—building a hobby into a business, for example, or developing a family member’s idea. One entrepreneur noticed an opportunity while honeymooning in Italy (the study did not report how long the marriage lasted).⁶ Another study analyzed entrepreneurs who adopted a technology for printing in three dimensions, for applications ranging from architectural models to artificial bones.⁷ None of the entrepreneurs sought out the novel technology, but rather stumbled upon it unexpectedly.

Anomalies are easy to miss. They initially emerge as weak signals that whisper rather than shout. Long before the large bikes broke down, the Honda team attracted interest as they scooted around Los Angeles on their Honda 50s. They wrote off the attention as mere curiosity rather than seeing it as a clue about an untapped market for a nonthreatening motorcycle. When a Sears buyer inquired about distributing the small bikes, Honda managers dismissed the call because Sears was not a traditional motorcycle dealer. Similarly, major steel companies underestimated Mittal for decades because the business started in Indonesia, not a traditional breeding ground for industrial giants.

The human mind is hardwired to reinforce existing maps, even in the face of disconfirming evidence. Psychologists have documented a depressingly long list of cognitive biases that distort how people process new information and prevent them from noticing when established mental models break down. “Confirmation bias” refers to our tendency to notice data that confirms existing assumptions while ignoring or discrediting information that challenges our mental map.⁸ The British physicist William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, initially dismissed the discovery of X-rays as a hoax because the new energy source violated his deeply held assumptions about how the world should work.⁹

Despite these obstacles to spotting anomalies, there are steps that help people notice gaps they are not looking for, even when the clues are subtle and the mind resistant. They can recognize common anomalies, avoid practices that obstruct recognition, and actively surface incongruities by plunging into the action.

COMMON ANOMALIES

Anomalies are easy to miss, but familiarity with common incongruities increases the odds of noticing one. Not all anomalies point to an opportunity, but many do. Some recurrent anomalies are listed below.

This shouldn’t sell (but it does). One of the most welcome anomalies occurs when a product or service that shouldn’t sell, such as the Honda 50, exceeds expectations. Unexpected success points to unmet demand outside the boundaries of an established map. Companies should jump on unexpected success and double down, but business history is littered with examples of companies that stumbled upon an unexpected success and ignored it.¹⁰ A few years ago, a London shopkeeper began selling American donuts, which were among his best-selling and most profitable items. A few months later, he eliminated the donuts. The reason? They sold out so fast that later commuters passing through a nearby underground station complained when they couldn’t get one.

There should be a product here (but there isn’t). As accessories editor for Mademoiselle magazine, Kate Brosnahan spotted a gap in the market.¹¹ “I knew there was something missing in the market for handbags,” she later noted. “At the time there was only a very serious bag, the working woman bag with absolutely no style, or the outrageously expensive designer bag like Hermès or Gucci. I thought there must be something in between.”¹² In 1992, Brosnahan quit her job and with her partner, Andy Spade, founded Kate Spade, which filled the breach with fabric handbags combining functionality and fashion. The bags were a hit with women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, particularly after celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts bought them.

This shouldn’t be so bad, expensive, time-consuming, or annoying (but it is). Customer pain is a reliable indicator of a potential opportunity, as people will typically pay to alleviate it. Reed Hastings, for example, founded Netflix after receiving a $40 late fee for a rented videocassette he misplaced; Charles Schwab created his eponymous low-cost brokerage because he was fed up with being ripped off by brokers; Scott Cook got the idea for Quicken after watching his wife’s frustration as she tracked their finances by hand.

This resource shouldn’t be so cheap (but it is). Opportunities for arbitrage appear when a resource is priced below its value in an alternative deployment. The simplest case occurs when an alert entrepreneur observes an underpriced asset, buys it, and then resells it at a profit. Some European real estate investors, for instance, buy vacation properties in cities immediately after a low-cost airline such as easyJet or Ryan Air announces its intention to fly there, anticipating the property will increase in value with the new air link. Other times the entrepreneur or manager must create a new business model to fully utilize the asset. The founders of Infosys, India’s pioneering provider of outsourced information technology services, deployed Indian engineers to serve multinational clients, allowing the company to earn good profits on the spread between what they charged clients and what they paid their engineers.

This must be good for something (but we’re not using it). In some cases, people stumble upon a promising resource or technology without knowing the best use for it, which prompts a search for a problem to solve. While working on medical devices at Corning Corporation, Dr. Hira Thapliyal had the idea to use radio-frequency energy to dissolve fatty deposits that clogged arteries, thereby clearing a path for a catheter.¹³ He founded a company to commercialize the technology but soon discovered that the total market was too small to support his firm. Undeterred by the setback, he explored alternative uses for the technology, and ultimately identified the orthopedics market, with more than two million arthroscopic surgeries per year. Thapliyal’s low-temperature process for dissolving damaged cartilage minimized damage to surrounding tissue, and he founded a new company, ArthroCare, to pursue the opportunity.

This should be everywhere (but it isn’t). Sometimes people stumble upon an attractive business model that has failed to spread widely despite its benefits. At the age of fifty-two, Ray Kroc invested his life savings and took out a mortgage on his home to acquire the exclusive rights to sell a five-headed milk shake maker, and was surprised when a small hamburger stand by the name of McDonald’s placed a large order for his Multimixers. When Kroc visited the restaurant, he was astounded to see the volume of food McDonald’s assembly line approach to flipping burgers could produce. Kroc convinced the McDonald brothers to franchise their concept outside California. Kroc did not invent the McDonald’s approach to fast food, but he recognized a good thing when he saw it. He scaled quickly, and within three years his sales surpassed one million burgers, giving him the confidence to buy the business from the McDonalds. Howard Schultz didn’t start the first Starbucks, but he glimpsed its potential and rolled the model out worldwide.

Customers shouldn’t use our product this way (but they do). Chinese appliance maker Haier uses its extensive distribution and service network throughout China to gather data on how customers actually use their products. Haier repairman, for example, discovered that customers in one rural province used their washing machines not only to launder clothes but to clean vegetables as well. The repairmen relayed this information to the product manager, who spotted an opportunity. She had company engineers install wider drain pipes and coarser filters that wouldn’t clog with vegetable peels, modifications that allowed the washing machine to clean cabbage as well as shirts. Haier then affixed large stickers emblazoned with pictures of local produce dancing with clothing on the modified washers. The stickers included instructions on how to wash vegetables safely using the machine. This innovation (along with others, including a washing machine that could also make goat’s-milk cheese) helped Haier win market share in China’s rural provinces while avoiding the cutthroat price wars that plagued the country’s appliance industry.

Customers shouldn’t care about this (but they do). In 1987, Qinghou Zong was selling school supplies from a bicycle-drawn cart in Hang-zhou when he noticed a striking anomaly.¹⁴ Nearly a decade into China’s economic reforms, wealthy parents could shop at well-stocked grocery stores but still worried that their children were malnourished. Zong had lived through famine during China’s lean years and could not believe that rich parents would worry about food. After digging further, Zong discovered that Beijing’s one-child-per-family policy had produced a generation of “little emperors,” whose parents and grandparents indulged their every whim. Spoiled rotten, these kids sated themselves on junk food. Zong spotted a gap in the market to sell nutritional supplements that would stimulate children’s appetites, provide vitamins and minerals, and assuage parental anxiety. More than three hundred supplements filled the shelves of Chinese stores, but they all targeted adults and promised to boost vitality and sexual potency. By exploring the anomaly, Zong was able to see where the prevailing map in the supplement industry—selling herbal Viagra to adults—ignored a potentially lucrative segment.

This could work in our industry (but we don’t do it). When he died on July 7, 2006, at the age of eighty-seven, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (known as Dr. V.) was credited with saving more than one million Indians from blindness.¹⁵ In 1976, at fifty-eight, Dr V. retired from his ophthalmology practice and opened an eleven-bed clinic in Madurai, India, with two other ophthalmologists. Dedicated to eradicating blindness in India, his clinic grew in the following thirty years to a network of five hospitals. Aravind Clinic treated anyone, asking payment from those who could afford it while providing the same quality service free of charge to the two-thirds of patients who could not. Despite giving away their services to the majority of patients, Aravind bankrolled nearly all of its operations and expansion from its own funds. Despite his success, Dr. V. was frustrated that existing procedures could not clear India’s backlog of twenty million blind. The aha moment came for Dr V. while passing a McDonald’s during a visit to the United States. Amazed that McDonald’s could serve millions of hamburgers daily at low cost and with uniform quality, he wanted to learn whether a standardized approach could be used to remove cataracts, the leading cause of blindness in India. After visiting Hamburger University in Oak Brook, Illinois, Dr. V. refined a model of screening, preparing, and operating on patients that allowed his staff to conduct nearly ten times as many operations per year compared to doctors in the state-owned hospitals.

We should have this at home (but we don’t). Sometimes people stumble upon a successful business model abroad and cannot believe it does not exist in their home country. In 1992, Michael Fogelberg, a Swede studying business at Seattle University, wanted to store his belongings while returning to Europe for a year, but found that all the local self-storage facilities were full.¹⁶ Fogelberg researched the self-storage industry for a class paper and discovered an attractive business model characterized by high rents, low turnover, and negligible operating costs. Once he understood the economics of the business, Fogelberg was shocked to learn self-storage was virtually nonexistent in continental Europe, despite a population comparable to the United States and smaller houses that should have created greater demand for convenient off-site storage. Fogelberg convinced his father to fund the opportunity and eventually paired with Shurgard, an established North American self-storage firm, to create a European business.

They shouldn’t be making so much money (but they are). Established competitors are often surprised when nonconventional rivals make more money than they should. For decades, Goldman Sachs partners had avoided investment management, which they believed generated lower fees than trading and investment banking.¹⁷ When Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette published its financial performance as part of a 1970 stock offering, Goldman partners were startled to discover the stability and scale of their rival’s asset management business. Shortly thereafter, Goldman expanded into managing corporate pension funds and aggressively built their asset management business.

ANOMALY PITFALLS

Anomalies are easy to miss under the best of circumstances. Certain traits and practices blind people to incongruities altogether. Forewarned is forearmed. Below is a list of some common pitfalls to avoid.

The arrogance of expertise. Experts in any field—science, medicine, law, education, government, or journalism—devote years to mastering the mental map that defines their field. Professionals reinforce established habits of thought by associating with like-minded colleagues. Over time, experts grow more secure that their reputation is deserved and more confident that their interpretation is correct.¹⁸ Anomalies challenge more than an expert’s assessment of a particular situation; they threaten to undermine the knowledge that underpins their status, legitimacy, and identity. Narrow expertise inevitably excludes important facts while raising the costs of admitting that the expert’s mental model is flawed.

To spot anomalies, experts must recognize not only the value of their knowledge but also its limitations. Dr. Kevin Stone, a prominent San Francisco orthopedic surgeon, was surprised to learn that several of his patients took glucosamine in place of the ibuprofen Stone had prescribed for joint pain.¹⁹ Many doctors might have ignored the incongruity, dismissed glucosamine as a fad, or scolded patients for disregarding their sage advice. Stone, however, was humble enough to recognize he might be missing something. He learned that glucosamine was the leading nutritional supplement in Europe, where clinical research supported its efficacy. Veterinarians, he discovered, swore by it, and their patients fell for neither fads nor placebos. Based on his research, Stone founded Joint Juice, a company that produces glucosamine in an easy-to-ingest liquid.

The weakness of strong ties. Academics who study social networks use the term strong tie to describes links between people—such as long-term colleagues and family members—characterized by frequent interaction, trust, and intimacy.²⁰ Strong ties bind the members of tightly knit communities together, and overlaps among these relationships weave a tight network where everyone knows everyone else. Recall how Firestone executives belonged to the corporate family, nestled inside the Akron tire community, and embedded within the ecosystem that supplied components to Detroit. Strong ties breed cohesion and trust, and help members mobilize resources. Unfortunately, the same information tends to circulate throughout these densely interwoven networks, like cabin air recycled during a flight. A dense tangle of tight ties can keep out unexpected data that might jar expectations and signal an opportunity or a threat.

While strong ties bind a community together, weak ties connect it to the outside world. Weak ties, such as casual acquaintances, distant relations, or people you follow on Twitter, often see the world differently and introduce fresh pieces of information that might clash with an existing mental map. Actively cultivating weak ties increases exposure to new information, thereby boosting the odds of surfacing an anomaly. One study found that entrepreneurs deliberately exposed themselves to different sources of information—for example, by striking up conversations on trains or maintaining a diverse range of acquaintances—to increase the odds of stumbling upon an interesting opportunity.²¹ Consider the Indian information technology firm Infosys, which could have made a comfortable living serving undemanding local firms. Instead, Infosys executives sought out the most sophisticated global customers, including General Electric and Nordstrom. These customers made “unreasonable” demands that exposed gaps between the company’s traditional mental map and the needs of leading corporations worldwide.

The insulation of power. The world may be flat, but most organizations are not. Large corporations, banks, government agencies, and military services are organized as hierarchies, where information flows up, orders flow down, and power concentrates at the top. The folks at the bottom of the pyramid—the frontline troops, employees serving customers every day—are first to see where an existing mental map clashes with the facts on the ground. In theory, these anomalies should percolate up the organization to the powers that be. In practice, however, many leaders surround themselves with an inner circle that protects the boss from anything he or she doesn’t want to hear, especially signs that the chosen strategy may not be working. Consider Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who presided over the largest bankruptcy in history. Fuld rarely visited the trading floors to collect firsthand information on market shifts and surrounded himself with lieutenants who discouraged dissent and excoriated anyone who bore bad news.²²

Contrast Fuld with Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO, who recognized that the first signals of change emerge far from the boardroom. “Snow,” as Grove put it, “melts at the periphery.”²³ Grove preached a healthy paranoia about the limitations of Intel’s business model. To minimize the odds of being caught off guard, he actively sought the opinion of frontline employees, dissatisfied customers, journalists, and investors who could point out potential flaws in the company’s mental map.

The seduction of routine. “Routine,” according to the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “is the god of every social system.”²⁴ Standardizing an ad hoc process—from cooking hamburgers at McDonald’s to assembling cars at Toyota—increases efficiency, reduces waste, and paves the way for continuous improvement. During the past sixty years, a series of process management tools, including total quality management and lean manufacturing, have spread rapidly. These tools all aim to identify defects, such as burnt Big Macs or defective radios in a Camry. Six Sigma, a process management tool developed by Motorola and used by nearly half of all large corporations, attempts to drive the frequency of defects below four per million possible occasions for error.²⁵ Six Sigma and similar techniques make perfect sense for improving high-volume activities such as fast-food preparation and manufacturing, where deviations annoy customers.

Some organizations have extended Six Sigma outside the factory and made it a core tenet of their overall management philosophy. Striving for zero defects in all activities is dangerous, however, because it can discourage experimentation and hamper learning. More subtly, it dulls sensitivity to anomalies. Process management instills the habit of viewing all anomalies as defects to be eliminated rather than clues to be explored. Process management has its place—typically the factory or the back office—but excessive devotion to routinization devalues the incongruities and serendipity that often signal opportunities. Motorola pioneered Six Sigma but still missed golden opportunities that Nokia and Samsung seized. An excellent study by Professors Mary Benner and Mike Tushman found that a heavy commitment to process management decreased a firm’s ability to seize new opportunities.²⁶ Managers are beginning to realize the limitations of process management tools. A recent study by the management consulting firm Bain & Company found that dissatisfaction with Six Sigma was growing and many companies were abandoning the tool.²⁷

GET WRONG FAST

Few institutions in the world face greater turbulence than the U.S. Marine Corps. As America’s force-in-readiness, the Marines’ missions include not only combat but also evacuations, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, and counterterrorism in some of the most unsettled spots on earth. The end of the Cold War made the world more, not less, turbulent for the Marines, which deployed every five weeks on average during the 1990s, a threefold increase in deployment frequency.²⁸ In the late 1980s, Marine commandant Albert Gray initiated a fundamental rethinking of Corps doctrine to accommodate new realities. The resulting document, entitled Warfighting, recognized that no plan survives contact with turbulence. “In the heat of battle,” according to Warfighting, “plans will go awry, instructions and information will be unclear and misinterpreted, communications will fail, and mistakes and unforeseen events will be commonplace. It is precisely this natural disorder which creates the conditions ripe for exploitation by an opportunistic will.”²⁹ To seize opportunities born of disorder, Marines identify flaws in their map quickly so they can fix them fast as well.

Plunge, don’t plan. Generals can plot strategy in the map room, but troops win or lose in the field. Marine Corps officers plan, of course, but they also recognize the limitations of those plans in battle. No general, no matter how experienced or well informed, can foresee how an engagement will unfold. Rather than spend endless hours honing the perfect plan, Marines develop a good enough plan. Many follow the 70 percent solution—if they have 70 percent of the information, do 70 percent of the analysis, and feel 70 percent confident, then a plan is good enough and they proceed. The important work begins when they test their map and adapt it in light of facts on the ground. Marines don’t succeed by getting their map right the first time but by finding out where it is wrong (and fixing it) quicker than the enemy.

Plunging into the fray trumps extensive planning in a variety of turbulent contexts, including entrepreneurship. One study of German entrepreneurs found that more time spent planning decreased the odds that a start-up would survive.³⁰ In the late 1980s, Taiwanese food companies eyed the booming Chinese market. Instant noodle leader Uni-President carefully planned its strategy to enter the mainland market from the comfort of its Taiwanese headquarters. By contrast, at Ting Hsin, a cooking oil company, three of the four Wei brothers who ran the company moved their families from Taiwan to China to immerse themselves in the local market. The brothers built a housing complex with nearly three hundred villas to attract other managers to China.

Reconnaissance pull. In reconnaissance, a forward unit advances ahead of the rest of the troops to assess an unfamiliar situation, including terrain, weather, civilian support, road conditions, and enemy deployments ahead. Reconnaissance, at its heart, is a process of stumbling forward into a shifting situation, observing circumstances, and modifying a map in real time. Although troops do not know exactly what they will find, by plunging forward they turn up new information quickly and use it to adapt their plan. Recognizing that their current map must remain subject to revision, reconnaissance troops remain alert to anything that is out of place. The advance is pulled forward by reconnaissance rather than pushed forward by dogged adherence to a preexisting plan.

When entering the terra incognita of the American market, Honda’s managing director, Takeo Fujisawa, did not try to dictate a detailed strategy. Instead he chose a trusted subordinate, sent him to study the U.S. market firsthand, and gave him wide latitude on how he increased sales. The Wei brothers continuously adapted their recipes, distribution, and advertising as they advanced and learned more about the new market. Uni-President, in contrast, attempted to replicate its existing model in China and crafted a marketing plan to sell the same products, at premium prices, through similar distribution channels to those they used in Taiwan. Uni-President doggedly stuck to its plan, ignoring evidence that Chinese consumers preferred different flavors, had less money to spend, and shopped differently than their Taiwanese counterparts.

Send out multiple probes. When advancing into turbulence, a prudent Marine officer sends out probes in different directions to broaden the search for new information. Executives and entrepreneurs should likewise avoid betting the company on a single path forward. Ideal probes are inexpensive and quick, to avoid dissipating resources. Sending out multiple probes rather than plowing full steam ahead in a single direction requires leaders with the intellectual humility to recognize that any plan, no matter how good it sounds in theory, is flawed. Managers often staff probes with “expendable” troops, short on talent and long on free time. This tendency is a mistake. Successful reconnaissance requires outstanding people who combine the alertness to spot anomalies, the humility to modify their map, the tenacity to stick with it, and the boldness to seize an opportunity should it arise. Honda president Fujisawa chose one of his most promising managers to lead the North American probe, while three of the four Wei brothers moved to China to evaluate the market.

Pass surfaces and swarm gaps. Marines use the term surfaces to describe an enemy’s physical stronghold and moments when the adversary is on guard, and gaps to describe physical weaknesses and windows of opportunity when an enemy is on its back foot. Marines sometimes compare reconnaissance to groping their way blindfolded along a wall of resistance, tapping to find where the wall is strongest and where cracks exist. They “pass surfaces” by sidestepping entrenched resistance rather than trying to punch their way through, and “swarm gaps” by piling into any breach they discover, calling additional troops to follow them.

Passing surfaces and swarming gaps produces a fluid advance, which military thinkers liken to water wearing away at an obstacle. “If we watch a torrent bearing down on…[an] earthen dam in its path, we see that it first beats against the obstacle feeling and testing it at all points. Eventually it finds a small crack at some point. Through the crack pour the first driblets of water and they rush straight through…simultaneously the water behind pours straight through the breach.”³¹

Honda passed a surface by pulling back from the big bikes and swarmed the gap for smaller bikes. The Wei brothers first tried and failed to sell premium cooking oil, then egg rolls, and then biscuits, hit resistance in these segments, and moved on in each case. Then the youngest brother stumbled on a gap. On an eighteen-hour train ride to Beijing, he opened a package of instant noodles from Taiwan. He was shocked when the aromatic noodles, so common in Taiwan, attracted hungry glances from other passengers, some of whom asked to sample the noodles. Quick-and-dirty market research revealed that China’s instant noodle market was divided into two extremes: low-quality products in shabby packaging at one end and at the other premium imported noodles sold as luxury goods in airports and boutiques.

Finish strong. Multiple probes, light taps, and quick retreats can degenerate into a tentative advance that hinders troops from exploiting opportunities with vigor. To avoid the risk of missing opportunities, managers must be prepared to switch from an exploratory advance to a strong finish, yanking resources from other uses and concentrating them to exploit an opportunity to the hilt. Honda executives recognized that the small bikes represented a golden opportunity to expand sales, and finished strong by expanding distribution and buying expensive television advertisements.

The Wei brothers believed high-quality instant noodles at an affordable price for the mass market represented a golden opportunity. They formulated flavors that appealed to different tastes in different Chinese provinces and priced their product above low-end noodles but still within the average consumer’s budget. Their test market in Beijing succeeded beyond all expectations, generating orders for three months’ production in the first day. To secure an early lead, the Wei brothers raised capital, launched a nationwide advertising campaign, invested more than $300 million in production capacity, and built distribution throughout China. By the time Uni-President executives admitted their plan was flawed, they found themselves far behind the Wei brothers in terms of brand, production, and distribution.

All mental maps are flawed, and anomalies point out gaps between a simple model and a complex reality, the discrepancies between a stable representation and a situation in flux. Although people cannot know in advance where their model is flawed, they can recognize common anomalies, avoid pitfalls that blind them to discrepancies, and plunge into the fray to surface anomalies faster. Finding anomalies is necessary to updating a plan but is not sufficient. To keep a map fresh, one must incorporate new information, reject some old assumptions, rethink others, and reconfigure how the pieces fit together.

Anomalies, for many, are an annoyance at best and a disaster at worst. In this view, they represent a malfunction in a mental map akin to a car breaking down on the highway. If the story ends there, with the map abandoned like a broken-down car on the roadside, anomalies are bad news. But anomalies need not mark the end. They can also spur a fresh twist to an old story. The next chapter explores improvisation to show how to incorporate anomalies into an existing map and keep it fluid as circumstances shift.