The purpose of this essay is to critically evaluate a statement made by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door”
Emerson’s statement suggests that if you create products or services that are better than competitors (neighbours) customers will purchase them. Cooper & Kelleher believe that Emerson is implying that there is a direct relationship between product quality and customer demand. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered when critically evaluating Emerson’s statement, the essay will ask several questions of the statement using case studies and academic theories to answer said questions. The essay will then summarize its evaluation of the statement.
How does the world know the ‘man’ has made the best mouse trap? A case-study into Xerox Parc appendix A is a good example of this. The Xerox Corporation made major break troughs in Computer technologies, examples of these are the world’s first personal computer (Alto), the mouse, icons & pull down menus and LAN. There is plenty of evidence that these are break through products but Xerox didn’t get them to the Market place (the world). This invites the argument that Emerson’s statement ‘though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door’ is incorrect. That’s assuming that by ‘the world’ he means the market place. Looking further into the Xerox Parc case study it goes on to discuss how after visiting Xerox parc Steve Jobs (Apple) headhunted some of Xerox’s top developers to further develop (Alto) and Xerox’s other break through products into the Macintosh. This could be argued as evidence that Emerson’s statement is true as the great products that Xerox created did end up in the market place (the world) via Apple (the beaten path). This strengthens the argument for Cooper & Kellehers...