Mastretta Mxt Creating an Ecosystem for the Fisrt Mexican Sports Car
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Innovation and Corporate Entrepreneurship
Mastretta MXT: Creating an ecosystem for the first Mexican sports car.
Brissia Guerrero Heredia Moises Hernandez Figueroa Godofredo Quesada Pastor
Mastretta MXT: The first Mexican sports car... ever.
“We needed to create a great car because Mexico has no tradition of sophisticated sports car manufacturing. It is most important that our customers are delighted by the new MXT. That’s what we aimed to do from the first drawing of the car, but we also want to make our country proud of the MXT and to show the world what we can do.”1
These were the words of Daniel Mastretta founder and CEO of MastrettaTecnoidea S.A., as the Mastretta MXT concept car was presented at the British International Motor Show held in London in July 2008. (Exhibit 1) Developing the MXT, a car that rivaled English firm Lotus´ Elise2, was a dream the Mastretta brothers had had since the late 80´s when they had founded Tecnoidea S.A. Back then Tecnoidea was a company that focused on microbus and urban bus body chassis design and engineering. During the mid-nineties Daniel realized there was a growing market for sports cars both in Mexico an internationally. Seeing this as an opportunity and knowing that outside the four big American car manufacturers no one in Mexico was even thinking on producing cars, let alone sports cars, he started working on the Mastretta MXA which would constitute the first of the prototypes of the newly created brand. The 2012 Mastretta MXT, which is the newest version of the car, is built on a tube-frame monocoque chassis, using double wishbone suspension pieces front and rear, carrying coil springs and monoshocks. The engine is Ford's Duratec in-line 4-cylinder, with an announced power output of 250 PS (184 kW) and 348Nm of torque connected to a 5-speed manual gearbox.3 (Exhibit 2) In plain english this means that the Mastretta is a car second-to-none in the midsize sports car market around the world. At $56,000.00 USD the MXT is considered a collector´s car, a product made for connoisseurs rather than for the regular car-buyer. But its not the pricequality ratio which makes the brand attractive, its not even the its pristine design, it is the idea that one is buying a "Mexican car" what has given the brand its current success both in and outside of Mexico. Even the brand´s logo sports the mexican flag proudly which contributes to the whole "mexicanness" of the product. The Ecosystem Strategy.4 After both the presentations in London in 2008 and Los Angles 2011 Daniel knew that they were on to something. But one thing was creating one concept car and a totally different one was to create the units to fulfill the demand they had created in the US and Europe.
1 2 3
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/25/london-‐2008-‐mastretta-‐mxt-‐will-‐be-‐mexicos-‐first-‐homegrown-‐car/ http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/mastretta-‐mxt-‐a-‐mexican-‐lotus/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 http://mastrettacars.com/es/cont/About_Us/About_Us.php HBS. Match your innovation strategy to your innovation ecosystem. Adner, Ron.
4
For this purpose, in 2011, the company announced the construction of a new manufacturing plant in Toluca, Edo. De Mexico, to start the production of the final prototype and they also announced that 70% of their production was headed to fulfill international sales, especially for the U.S. and U.K. markets.5 This would be the first car-assembly plant in Mexico incorporated entirely with Mexican capital that aimed to produce an all-mexican product. It is this idea of constituting a vertically aligned company that would design, produce and commercialize the car, a car that was truly mexican, what was the real innovation in Mastretta´s case. In 2014, with the plant of Toluca producing 150 units per year, Mastretta opened it first dealership in the City of Toluca. (Exhibit 3) With this, Mastretta had given a huge step in the creation of an ecosystem for their product. Now, they owned the whole value chain, from design to production to sales. What once seemed impossible was now a reality. The idea of having a firm and a brand that did not need foreign capital and the creation of the whole ecosystem from scratch was achieved after more than fifteen years of hard work. As part of this ecosystem being built around a top-notch car is the fact that all the major magazines, TV shows and main newspapers of the world, from latinamericancar.com to the New York Times to the BBC, have dedicated a space in their issues to the new "tortilla-car". (Exhibit 4) Even though the comments presented in the award-winning British car TV show "Top Gear" were less-than-favorable, all of the other media has produced good reviews about the MXT. All this publicity contributes in the way not only the MXT is perceived but also hi-tech products coming from Mexico. 6 Still there is room for the ecosystem to grow but Daniel has a very clear idea as to where the company is going. He recently opened the company to sell shares of its equity in order to continue to grow through more dealerships and expanding its current production capacity.7 With a continuous demand and new investors attracted by the company´s structure, Mastretta has nothing to do but grow in the next few years An ecosystem that ensures future success. As for assessing the effectiveness of the company´s approach we could say that the MXT proved that a company with enough vision could break paradigms within mexican culture and both create a state-of-the-art innovative product and also build the ecosystem the product needed in order to succeed.8 Daniel Mastretta´s boldness to take a company that produced parts for buses and turn it into a whole value chain that ended in a new type of product, the first in the country, is definitely a disruptive innovation. It disrupts the paradigm of
http://www.soyentrepreneur.com/26788-‐entrevista-‐con-‐carlos-‐mastretta.html HBS. A note on corporate Entrepreneurship: Challenge or Opportunity?. Chakravorti, Bhaskar.
the producers who now might engage in the creation of new ideas and/or new products that would otherwise have to be imported. In this sense, Mastretta´s key innovation is the idea that Mexico can produce any kind of luxury product just as well as the British, the French, the Americans or the Japanese can. And its key success factor is the way they confected an entire ecosystem for the idea to grow in.
Exhibit 1 and 2.
The Mastretta MXT at the 2008 British International Motor Show & car performance according to mastretta´s website.
Exhibit 3. First Mastretta car dealership in Toluca. México.
