The case analysis reveals one of many success stories in the US, when an entrepreneurial spirit fueled a start of a venture that resulted in its global expansion. It looks at John Kilcullen’s way of doing business to secure recurring revenues for IDG Books in times of a massive expansion of the Internet. As CEO, he created the Dummies brand, under which millions of Dummies teaching books on a variety of topics were sold worldwide. The current analysis is a step-by-step approach to corporate entrepreneurship, explaining it in subtle details. Regarding it as Kilcullen’s achievement CV, the paper reflects on the qualities of an entrepreneur, along with his aims and risk-taking in pursuing a thriving corporate career.
The long history of IDG Books starts with its foundation in 1990. At that time, International Data Group published solely IT market research magazines. Largely, thanks to financial and moral support from its CEO, Pat McGovern, the company launched its first Dummies product DOS for Dummies (1991). Only in 1998, the company finally started to expand its business into the media and games sector to teach everyone by using a simple language. From 2000 onwards, Dummies books became available for purchasing on the Internet.
Kilcullen’s impressive sales motive is “acquire what sells”. He always regarded publishing as part of the sales process. Also, identifying and satisfying customer needs was crucial for him. As CEO, he really possesses high capacity to work under pressure and generate innovative business ideas that are productive in a long term. Kilcullen took a number of demanding jobs in the world of publishing. They included a position of traveling salesman, and later, marketing and sales manager, among others.
His made a brilliant career, because he always respected people with authority, and was doing his best to follow a path to make his family proud. Also, a sense of teamwork helped John later in his entrepreneurial career. Moreover, his professional goals were based on the Jesuit principle of service. From the very childhood, John kept a high work ethic. While doing odd jobs in summers and earning some money for college, he maintained the approach of over-achieving. After graduating Magna cum Laude, Kilcullen finally decided to start his own venture. He named it JK Enterprises. Then, he shifted to work for Que in Indianapolis. His duties there included corporate training, too. Afterwards, John started to work for Bantam Doubleday as manager and trainer of their sales team. Later he became promoted to director of sales.
Yet after nine years, Kilcullen became depressed with democracy and finally came up with his own business plan to manage a brand. Named the “best sales guy in the industry”, he was given a chance to start his own company. So, he chose to venture on an absolutely new book business, where people would buy books regardless of the author. John usually followed his intuition, rather than market research. Experiencing a failure during the first year and gaining no understanding, apart from resentment, from his staff, he had only one choice left: to take a risk. A new and controversial brand had to be invented – it came out as the Dummies brand. Dummies books meant that they were just funny and non-technical at all for their readers. The Dummies brand won the public: “It was entrepreneurial success born out of failure”.
Before the millennium, IDG Books had a growth of 10-13% a year, expanding widely to overseas markets. It published books with as much as 400 Dummies titles, with sales reaching over $ 1 billion. To conclude with, the key to success is freedom and inspiration. It is also about mutual trust and placing bets on the right people.
