” Assumption number in the food industry used to be that the way to find out what people want to eat, what would make people happy, was to ask them.”

But what they discovered in the food industry was that

“People don’t know what they want (to eat)”
“The mind knows not what the tongue wants, it’s a mystery”

I wonder if this applies to other industries as well.

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

This one reminds me of some of the key items in Jim Collin’s “How the Might Fall” (Author of Good to Great and Built to Last)
http://www.leanforeveryoneblog.com/2010/06/how-the-mighty-fall-lean.html

http://www.blip.tv/file/3314388

Our view is that the telecoms market is fundamentally changing and therefore quite a few software vendors risk being left high and dry because they’re continuing to sweat their existing assets or incrementally improve their offering.
But this swerve is fundamental and challenges many of the norms that have been built into existing software.

This means that we now have zombie business and operational support systems (BOSS) vendors being led by zombie bosses – some of these guys aren’t really even sweating yet, although they should be.

It doesn’t have to be terminal, as you explain in your post, but it does require some pretty strong action. What I’ve seen is that when there’s a change of mgt – risky as that can be – then it can resurrect the vendor. A US OSS provider comes to mind that seems to be moving back from the edge – nice to see – facilitated from my PoV by a change in staff.

Change the DNA for Species Evolution or Wait for Extinction.

Go Darwin!

To the comment about Schwans, it’s an interesting situation with them. I interviewed with them a few years back and then one of the founding brothers was very old and transitioning things to a new CEO. I thought from the outside it looked like a pretty cool place, but I looked at Glassdoor last month and it got one of the lowest ratings by its employees of all the companies listed.

“In turnarounds or repositions, the culture must be one of the earliest things that changes so that the organization can drive and support change as opposed to fight the inherent change required.”

They are deer in the headlights and have an organization that is so structured and culture so internally focused that they really can’t do anything. Someone needs to come in to replace Balmer that will shake up the company and change the culture and strategy.”

A hint: on May 26, 1995, entrepreneur CEO Bill Gates wrote his famous “Internet Tidal Wave” memo, which unflinchingly set the company on a new path that embraced the technological disruption of the Net. Then, in January of 2000, business-focused Steve Ballmer took over as CEO of MSFT, where his relentless focus on execution has tripled revenues of his existing business lines.

This article pretty much lays it all out, although it doesn’t give enough credit to Bill Gates for the pivot in 1995, saying that Microsoft was still nimble then but is lumbering now (as if that was a pure accident.)

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/10/28/the-lost-decade.html

For me those guys (Otto, Quelle …) died in 1995, Some of them still exist, but they failed to exploit and achieve what Amazon accomplished

I Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle the market is represented by the area under the normal curve. As time goes by a company moves to the left. What gets lost is that the company is consuming it’s market. Tragedy strikes when a company has consumed 50% of its available market. Growing revenues are indirectly proportional to the available market remaining until 50% is consumed.

The cure is to bring a discontinuous innovation into the tornado before 50% of the market is consumed.

Something else also happens as you move to the left on the technology adoption lifecycle. The organization matures. The mature organization is the wrong organization to bring another technology through the lifecycle. Each phase of the technology adoption lifecycle requires an organization tuned to its market phase. Further, the new technology will not sell to the existing customer base, so the customer base is unique as well. Christen’s separation notion needs to be extended not just to starting a new company for the new technology, but new companies for each phase of the lifecycle.

The early adopter custom applications phase requires a different set of skills than the vertical market served in the next phase. The tornado is a different organization as well. The can do “free” for seats. the post-tornado organization is yet again different, as is the late market/SaaS organization.

Unfortunately, we learn new things and forget the old things. We cannot go back. Staff divides into process owners and client/customer knowledge owners.

Instead of assuming linearity, assume discrete organizations serving discrete markets with discrete products. Long-term survival is quite possible, but you can’t get there with long-term linearity, economics of scale, or organization-wide alignment. Align to the phase. Each phase-specific organization needs its own cost basis and policy model. What works in one should not be rolled out to the others. Mind Christensen’s separation across Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle.

Our company didn’t need to die. Neither does yours.

key extract:

How could a relatively flat line be scary?

It just looked so eerily familiar. Go back and look at what happened to CD sales from 1996 to 2001. Or check out newspaper company revenues from 1996 to 2005. Or Kodak’s film sales during the 1990s. Or Blockbuster’s revenues in the early part of the 2000s. Or Digital Equipment Corporation’s revenues in the 1980s. And on and on and on.

In the early days of transformation, market leaders tend not to feel deep pain. The transformation takes root away from the mainstream, or in a seemingly non-connected market. It’s not yet good enough for mainstream markets. Or, the overall increase in consumption acts as a “rising tide” that lifts the boats in the mainstream market. This makes it easy for executives to say, “I get what you are talking about. But my business is healthy! It’s all overblown.”