Detour: My Unexpected, Amazing, Life Changing Journey With OnStar

Detour is the story behind the launch of OnStar’s now well known blue button, as told through the eyes of its founder and CEO of over fourteen years, Chet Huber. It’s a personal narrative that describes the events that led up to General Motors’ unexpected choice of a locomotive salesman as the leader of its ambitious high-technology start-up, and the subsequent series of twists and turns and near-death experiences that the venture faced until it ultimately discovered its formula for success. Detour provides a unique, behind the scenes look at the issues and challenges that confronted one of the world’s largest industrial corporations as it attempted to engage in profound, disruptive innovation. Emergent strategies, resource conflicts, interdependent architectures, cultural mismatches, branding, bureaucracy and corporate politics are only a few of the elements of the OnStar story that made it interesting enough to be the subject of case studies now being taught at the Harvard Business School. And while Detour provides insights into many of the theories of innovation in use today, it goes beyond a clinical view of the enterprise by focusing on the people involved, and bringing the living, breathing nature of the adventure to life. OnStar’s launch proved to be as much about passion as it was about profit, where insanely hard technology and tribes of hostile gremlins were ultimately mastered not only to serve the bottom line, but more importantly to serve a greater good. Detour captures the often overlooked human side of business history, in this case where the mission of the business to save peoples’ lives infected an initially small but thankfully growing band of otherwise dispassionate corporate professionals, transforming career assignments into a collective personal quest. It highlights the fact that resources and effective strategy are critical yet insufficient elements of success, but when connected to a force-multiplying band of emotionally committed co-conspirators they become an unstoppable force. In order to tell a complete story, Detour unfortunately also highlights the seemingly endless “muck” that typically creates friction in large organizations; institutionalized cynicism, self-perpetuating bureaucracy, shortages of vision and courage, and a labyrinth of personal agendas. These are the unnecessary yet sadly consistent forces that stifle initiative and creativity, blur accountability and ultimately work to deny innovation a foothold. But fortunately for the future of OnStar, General Motors’ commitment and overriding instinct to “do the right thing”, combined with the tenacity, courage and resolve of a wide range of very special individuals prevailed, creating a beachhead for an important innovation, and changing thousands of peoples’ lives in the process.