photo credit: mistress_f
Okay, I must say that I do enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog. I think that he comes up with some great nuggets that you can really chew on and learn from. Just the other day he had a post called “The WordPerfect Axiom“. The general premise of the article is about how technology advances and changes cause shifting sands in the marketplace. He outlines a few companies that were on top of the world in their markets and then when the technology shifted… they were in quicksand.
Recent years have many of examples as well. Do you really think that 5 years ago the New York Times was worried about their subscriber base or how they were going to keep things moving? No. Then the market shifted, people began to prefer the free news on the Internet, they began to like reading the news on their smart phones or e-Readers. At the same time the environmental conservation push began picking up steam. Stop printing so much paper… it’s wasteful. It became a perfect storm for many of the newspaper companies.
Less than a decade ago, Kodak was riding high in the film camera world. The digital cameras were in existence but they sure didn’t match the quality of film. They would never replace film for serious photographers. Except for one thing… they did. The technology improved and people began to see the advantages of dealing with digital images. All of sudden the rug was pulled out from under Kodak.
So the fact is that the technology is going to constantly be changing. What works today probably isn’t going to work in 5 years. The real question is how do you position your business to take advantage of these changes? Some people will say to wait to see where the technology goes and how it matures before investing effort into it. I disagree. Maybe they say just wait to see if acceptance of mobile coupons takes off before you invest in them. I would say they are wrong. You maybe don’t want to be on the bleeding edge and be the very first to stumble into new technologies. You do want to be in the initial wave. It allows you to stand out. Otherwise you are just running around saying “me too!!!”. If wait until all the kinks are worked out and many other businesses are doing it, it’s not a competitive advantage… it’s a necessity to continue competing. If you consider what has happened to some of these large companies when the technology shift caught them napping, doesn’t it make sense to at least keep an eye on what’s going on? If you don’t, the wave will pass you by as it did many of the outlined businesses.
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