Who do you want and can you be? Apple, Nokia, Palm, Siemens, Samsung?
The classic primal story of digital transformation is Kodak. How the market leader in photo film with a market value of 20 billion USD in 1994 (almost) went bankrupt in 2012. From 120,000 to 5,000 employees. Despite the fact that they had access to the technology for digital photography.
Recently, I saw James Eagle’s fascinating visualization of the global mobile phone market since 1990. See the link, it is a short animation of more than 2 minutes. About two companies, Nokia and Motorola that virtually dominate the market in 1990. About the rise and fall of traditional players such as Siemens, Sony and NEC. About the exotic products from RIM (Blackberry!) and Palm (I’ve also had them). About Samsung (around 2000) and Apple (around 2007) that only entered the market later. And about the fairly recent rise of Chinese parties such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Huawei.
It is fodder for a good discussion within a management board, or with the supervisory board. Who are we in our industry? Who do we want to be? Of course, every organization would like to be Apple, or Samsung. But how can we be sure that we have the right product, the right marketing and supply chain for this? History shows that it is much more likely that an organization will end up like Nokia or RIM/Blackberry: very successful for a certain period of time but lulled to sleep by success and therefore changed course too late. Too often, they think, organizations have too much to lose in the current business model. But if you don’t transform your own industry, someone else will do it for you. And then it is too late.
I love this kind of transformation, especially around digitization. This is where everything comes together. Setting out the right strategy, introducing new ways of working, developing new skills. And that while the existing model (apparently) still works fine. Why should we change? And this is where everything comes together, also for the leadership of an organization. Do we believe that the digital train is really passing us by (for the time being)? And how do we know what we don’t know, for example what artificial intelligence or 3D printing will mean for our industry in 5 to 10 years?
Because on the one hand, that means admitting that the management doesn’t know it all either. And on the other hand, the need to build new contacts, new networks with other organizations (all over the world), start-ups, universities. Because even though there is no manual for success in the digital world, what we do know is that waiting is very unwise. Think big and start small, dare to fail and dare to admit that the answer is not there. Paradoxically, this releases a lot of energy and creativity in an organization. I have seen that so often as a member of a board of directors and now also as a supervisory director or supervisor. And the role of leadership, for strategy and culture, cannot be overestimated. This is where it really comes down to it.
I am very curious about your insights, and would like to discuss them. Do you send a comment?