From Estonia, a small yet innovative country in North-Europe we found the purest breed of Pilot Fish encountered so far. As CEO Teet Jagomagi puts it, Pilot Fish Strategy would have had to be invented to tell the story of Regio, his company.
Mobile positioning technology company Regio is innovative even with its annual report. 2008 version was designed as a map. This is a fragment of it.
Regio started up 20 years ago making road maps of the region. Since they start, map business was all about printing but Regio turned it around to be all about programming and computing. On 1999 mobile communications giant Ericsson invented mobile positioning technology and decided to launch it from Baltic States. As Regio was the only one who had both cartography and programming competence, they were Ericsson’s only choice and became the main vendor for launch.
Regio enhanced the technology they developed for Ericsson and saw the opportunity to sell it globally. Their strategy was to find very strong partners from telecom industry and never go into retail or branding. The connection to Ericsson remained strong and until today they are the main partner for Ericsson in mobile positioning business. And as Ericsson is the biggest player in the World, Regio is the biggest in its business.
The cooperation with Ericsson is based on a lot of mutual trust. Besides their daily business, Ericsson provides Regio with access to latest mobile technology developments of their own. In return Regio keeps eyes open and provides Ericsson with the info from other players at global markets.
There are several great learning points as far as Pilot Fish Strategy is concerned. First, you have to have a unique strength in order to be attractive partner for industry giants. Second, the relationships and also luck plays an important role. It wouldn’t have probably happened to Regio if Ericsson would have decided to launch elsewhere. Third, concentrating to narrow niche but with huge potential scale is a true Pilot Fish spirit. Fourth, hooking up with the biggest global player in the field provided the lift to scale up their competence. Fifth, this relationship can be kept alive and mutually lucrative by trusting each other and by constantly offering partner new value. And fifth, Pilot Fish Company acting in global waters can come from anywhere. More at http://regio.ee/
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