In his book, Wide Body: The Triumph of the 747, Clive Irving recounts the history of Boeing's 747. Pan Am's founder, Juan Trippe, had very specific ideas of what he wanted the 747 to be. He envisioned the 747 to be a luxury liner with elegant staterooms, a theater, a library and a movie theater. He could influence the design because Pan Am had ordered twenty-five 747s.
You see Trippe was a nautical enthusiast. He dressed his pilots as ship captains (this never occurred to me until I read this book). He called his planes clipper ships after the great sailing ships.
For Boeing, most of what Trippe wanted was not feasible. Boeing argued that such luxury would be too expensive. Also, people would be too nervous to fly a two story plane.
Boeing's solution was help people forget they were sitting in a enormous airplane. To accomplished this, they made the interior as dull as possible. People would think they were sitting is a very large room.
Boeing solution is a terrific example of the 180 degree strategy which Jackie Bassett developed. Bassett is CEO of BT Industrial, Inc., a strategic management and technology consulting firm. She finds that for the toughest business problems, the solution may 180 degrees opposite the problem. For example, Boeing's problem was to satisfy Pan Am, the business flier and other potential buyers of the 747. Boeing did not develop a luxury liner, they did just the opposite. They designed a dull room that happened to be in a plane two stories high, and twice the length of the Wright brothers' first flight.
Trippe did get to see one of his ideas in the 747, the spiral staircase.
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