David and Goliath

Having started reading this book I am reminded of a David and Goliath moment in my business. Way back (before the year 2000) I had been subcontracted by a company X started by Craig Johnston to design the electronic communications for his automatic hotel minibar invention. The mechanical design was subcontracted to another company M which was an established industrial design house. The software to co-ordinate the minibars and charge the customer's account when a drink was removed was subcontracted to an established London software house S. Both M and S had teams working on the project whereas I was a sole trader. It soon became apparent that M also had interests in the electronics when they tried to exclude me. Meanwhile S appeared to be getting on well but when it came to demonstrating their software it had nice graphics but was clearly functionally not fit for purpose.

I took a David chance. I confronted M's manager telling him his electronics proposal was flawed but he didn't accept my judgement. I also did some hard thinking about S's software issues. As a result I approached my boss, the manager of X, warning him of M's flawed electronics proposal explaining that my design would work better and be cheaper. And I offered to write software that would both be completed in advance of and out-perform S's.  X hired an independent consultant to appraise my claims which were exonerated and I duly carried out my proposals within the agreed timescale. The resulting electronics and software were wholly satisfactory and faithfully ran the Butler system for many years.

Regrettably, after a number of years, the company X ceased trading when orders were lost when the UK and Ireland hotel trade suffered following the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001. Craig's apparent claim that he patented the design and now says between 15,000 and 20,000 Butlers have been sold must be exaggeration - I could believe in excess of 5,000 minibars with systems in perhaps 30 hotels throughout the UK and Ireland.