Several years ago I wrote what I consider one of the most seminal pieces I’ve published in the seven years I’ve been writing for Forbes. It was about Rob Ryan, founder of Ascend Communications, the internet company acquired by Lucent Technologies in 1999 for about $24 billion in 1999. Twenty years later, the Ascend deal may still hold the record for top venture backed technology acquisitions.
In a nutshell, as Ryan sat in a disastrous investor meeting and about to be kicked out the door, he recalled an article he’d read in Harvard Business Review. From my article:
It was a clutch moment. Ascend was selling dial-up Internet connectivity ports to customers such as AOL, Earthlink and UUnet. He was pitching George Kelly, the Chairman and CEO of CapStreet who’d taken Cisco public in 1990, to do the same for Ascend. To say the pitch was going badly would be an understatement. Less than 30 minutes into the discussion Kelly halted the conversation abruptly. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I won’t be investing in this company and I won’t take you public,” he said, and he stood to end the meeting.
It was the moment, Ryan recalls, when “stuff got real.”
As his life flashed before his eyes, he remembered an experience from his past. He’d been closeted away in a snowed-in cabin to evaluate his alternatives as the company had swung on an earlier pendulum of near-certain death in 1991. Consciousness brought him quickly back to the present. “No,” he said. “We are scheduled for a one-hour meeting. You owe me 30 more minutes.”
In the earlier experience, Ryan had found inspiration from a seminal article by C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel for Harvard Business Review: “The Core Competence of the Organization.”
In the HBR article, the authors shared the story of Honda thriving when they reached the “aha” moment of discovery about their real core competence. It wasn’t motorcycles, cars or even lawn mowers. It was their power in small combustible engines, applied to optimum use.
For Ryan’s company, Ascend, it wasn’t modems that made them valuable. It was the massively greater Internet access that could make the world wide web ubiquitous to the general public (and spawned the Sunflower business model of creating product “petals” that emanate from the core competence for many companies since).
Recently I’ve discovered another example in the company Hansen Lighting in Orem, UT. Under the leadership of Jason Petersen, founder and Emeritus CEO of technology venture XOLogic and owner of Hansen Lighting, the company has achieved record 3-year growth of 129 percent, according to the Inc. 5000 2018 list.
So you might assume that Hansen is a provider of light fixtures, and a highly successful one. But your assumption would be 100 percent wrong. In actuality, Hansen’s real business – the core competency that is fueling its current and future growth—is advancing the understanding and implementation of improved living, through healthier light.
Hansen is an innovative provider of what the Danish refer to as “Hygge” (hoo-ga)—the feeling of cozy contentment that comes from the simple and healthy pleasures of life. Reading a book indoors on a rainy day. A warm cup of tea or cocoa during snowy weather. And most especially, for Hansen Lighting, the mood and productivity benefits of healthy and optimal light.
The emphasis on “hygge” is one of the reasons Denmark ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world despite their infamous and notorious winters. So how does Hygge relate to lighting?
Interestingly, Hansen Lighting is rapidly becoming an expert on the connection between healthy lighting and mood, productivity and overall health. For educators, the company initiated research with a regional university that found statistically meaningful improvements in children’s attention span, resilience, group engagement and cooperation in the presence of optimal light. Workplaces are more productive. Conflict is less frequent and more productive (imagine that?).
In homes, well-designed and optimal lighting systems measurably improve wellness and safety by reducing strain, improving visibility and enhancing sensory experiences. They make spaces more welcoming, joy-filled and comfortable.
As you can see, then, the challenge for Hansen Lighting is to share its education with mothers and consumers, life-hack health enthusiasts, interior designers and decorators, and building designers, especially for schools and workplaces. Taken to its fullest fruition, imagine the increased productivity and revenue healthy lighting could bring to a company, or the increased capabilities the ideal lighting in an educational environment could bring.
Clearly, this is a mission and goal that is much farther reaching than the mass production and selling of fixtures. Likewise, it is an encounter with customers that needs to be experienced live. While education is vital to healthy lighting, it is not an outcome that customers (or the company) can accomplish by shopping online.
This does not deter Petersen in the least, as he recognizes the real and biggest accomplishment of Hansen Lighting will reside in the experience the company creates through many new retail destinations (beyond product outlets) throughout the United States and beyond. The company is ready for the challenge, Petersen says. The current Hansen Lighting locations in Orem and Draper, Utah, are prepared to serve as a guidepost and example for healthy lighting experiences through some 80-plus locations in the coming seasons.
If Petersen’s predictions are correct, lighting will become not only an issue of lumens and sustainability but will be recognized as a pillar of well-being and health in the future. The legacy of core competency that has driven Honda, Ascend and others can transform the industry of lighting as well, he believes. If healthy lighting is not on your personal horizon yet, it is sure to be coming, he maintains. Stay tuned.
