Saturday 17 May 2014

How To Remain Relevant

1. Change Before You Are Forced To: Most businesses wait to innovate until their hand is forced. As Steve Jobs once observed, if youre not willing to cannibalise your own business, someone else will do ti for you. Consider Blackberry and Nokia. Rather than recognise the seismic shifts prevalent in their industries, both these tech giants essentially relied on this horizontal size and market positioning until the writing on the wall was too dire to ignore. 2. Become Clear On the Business You Are Actually In: Many businesses fall into the trap of defining themselves by the products they sell or the markets they are operating in - all the while losing site of who they are and why they exist. Consider how Kodak did this and veered off track in the 1970s and '80s. Rather than remaining focussed on their core DNA as a memory preservation company, Kodak started to see themselves as a film company - a paradigm that left them unwilling and unable to embrace the post - film world. 3. Prune Dead Wood: Any gardener knows restoring vitality to a garden required pruning away the old in order to make way for the new. It is the same in business. Sony has also recognised the importance of this in turning around its flagging fortunes. The end of it is decade, a long marriage with Ericsson and the spinning off of entire business units is an attempt to restore the tech giant's agility and innovative flair. 4. Seek A Point Of Difference: "It is better to be different than better". Rather than trying to outdo the competition in your market, how can you pursue a new market in a new way? Consider the way Cirque du Soleil did this by building a flourishing business in a dying industry (circuses).

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