11–20 of 38 posts
Or as Deming put it: long-term successful organisations need to find their constancy of purpose . Kodak didn't find it: they were in the business of analogue film; they could have been in the business of capturing memories, and survived the digitalisation of photography. Manufacturers of carburetors generally didn't find it; they were in the business of carburetors, and not stochiometric mixtures of air and fuel, and…
>Take three companies in the 1990s: Sears, Beenz, and Amazon. >Sears bet the Internet changed nothing, to its detriment. Beenz bet the Internet changed everything – creating a points-based currency valid only at online merchants – to its detriment. Amazon bet the Internet changed distribution, but rooted its strategy in things that have never, and will never, change. It nailed the center of the Venn diagram of change…
* Computer companies that bet Cloud changed nothing (HP, IBM) * Oil companies that bet solar/wind changed nothing (Chevron, Exxon) * Car companies that bet electric changed nothing (Fiat?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, you've done a nice job of restating the article, actually. It claims that all seemingly revolutionary businesses were not successful because of the things that change (like technology solutions e.g., "finding things", "communication", "compute infrastructure" etc) but on the same unchanging principles (e.g., business opportunities and strategies). TFA / TL;DR: In the last 100 years we’ve gone from horses to jet…
Then I've done a bad job communicating what I meant. My point is, (virtually) every single product can make the claim they are making a bet on something that doesn't change. Both good and bad products. Failed and successful. The entire article says nothing of practical value. Everyone is betting on something that doesn't change and something which does.
Or as Deming put it: long-term successful organisations need to find their constancy of purpose . Kodak didn't find it: they were in the business of analogue film; they could have been in the business of capturing memories, and survived the digitalisation of photography. Manufacturers of carburetors generally didn't find it; they were in the business of carburetors, and not stochiometric mixtures of air and fuel, and…
This is.. a weird spin. Kodak is a great long-term success story. Businesses aren't forever. If Kodak was in the "business of capturing memories", what would they have done differently?
They wasted something like 25 years dragging their heels because they didn't realize that people don't use film because film is somehow magic. They use it to capture memories. Kodak missed that boat, spectacularly, because they believed they were in the film business. Their answer to digital, for a long time, was "let's market film harder"
(Sidebar: For somebody from outside the US, 100 years is at best a mid-term success story. )
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, you've done a nice job of restating the article, actually. It claims that all seemingly revolutionary businesses were not successful because of the things that change (like technology solutions e.g., "finding things", "communication", "compute infrastructure" etc) but on the same unchanging principles (e.g., business opportunities and strategies). TFA / TL;DR: In the last 100 years we’ve gone from horses to jet…
Then I've done a bad job communicating what I meant. My point is, (virtually) every single product can make the claim they are making a bet on something that doesn't change. Both good and bad products. Failed and successful. The entire article says nothing of practical value. Everyone is betting on something that doesn't change and something which does.
Seems like a nice sounding narrative that doesn't really hold water, at least from a practical perspective. Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, AWS, Google Search and a lot of others - they were in fields changing all the time. Unless you define these very abstractly as "communication", "socializing", "entertainment", "compute infrastructure" and "finding things" and say "these things don't change in that they continue to hap…
Well, you've done a nice job of restating the article, actually. It claims that all seemingly revolutionary businesses were not successful because of the things that change (like technology solutions e.g., "finding things", "communication", "compute infrastructure" etc) but on the same unchanging principles (e.g., business opportunities and strategies). TFA / TL;DR: In the last 100 years we’ve gone from horses to jet…
Or as Deming put it: long-term successful organisations need to find their constancy of purpose . Kodak didn't find it: they were in the business of analogue film; they could have been in the business of capturing memories, and survived the digitalisation of photography. Manufacturers of carburetors generally didn't find it; they were in the business of carburetors, and not stochiometric mixtures of air and fuel, and…
Not entirely impossible ;-). Amazon now offers the option of having your orders bundled up and delivered on a set day each week to save on trips. However, in my experience, they are quite bad at it and subset of the items will arrive "too fast" a day early.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is.. a weird spin. Kodak is a great long-term success story. Businesses aren't forever. If Kodak was in the "business of capturing memories", what would they have done differently?
If Kodak was in the "business of capturing memories", they wouldn't have dropped the technology for digital cameras. They wouldn't have been afraid of their own new tech (Kodak had digital camera technology in the early 70s) cannibalizing old tech (film), and instead invested in that segment. They wasted something like 25 years dragging their heels because they didn't realize that people don't use film because film i…
Or as Deming put it: long-term successful organisations need to find their constancy of purpose . Kodak didn't find it: they were in the business of analogue film; they could have been in the business of capturing memories, and survived the digitalisation of photography. Manufacturers of carburetors generally didn't find it; they were in the business of carburetors, and not stochiometric mixtures of air and fuel, and…
But people in Kodak got that, which is why they invented the digital camera. They didn't execute well. Transitions are tough.