edf40wrjww2CF_PaperMaster:Desc
Optical Distortion, Inc.
This case was prepared by Randall Wise and Darral G. Clarke.
Copyright ® 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Business School Case 9-575-072.
ODI is a very small company seeking to introduce a radically new product that may be a viable substitute for current practice in an agricultural market. The product is contact lenses for chickens, and it is hard to imagine a more unique product concept for which to develop a business plan. The decision model that accompanies the case is a heuristic model relating marketing effort to market response. The model is developed from managerial judgment and available secondary data. No expensive research is undertaken, yet this preliminary decision model proves to be quite useful for planning an entry strategy and defining future research needs. It also illustrates the development of a preliminary decision model, which is an important part in our analytical process.
In late fall of 1974, Daniel Garrison, president and chief executive officer of Optical Distortion, Inc. (ODI), asked Ronald Olson, marketing vice president, to develop a marketing plan for ODI's new and only product - a contact lens for chickens. While human contact lenses serve mainly to improve eyesight, the lens developed by ODI was made to partially blind the chickens. Garrison explained:
Like so many other great discoveries, our product concept was discovered quite by accident. In 1962 a chicken farmer in Arizona had a flock of chickens that developed a severe cataract problem. When he became aware of the problem, he separated the afflicted birds from the rest of the flock and subsequently observed that the afflicted birds ...