If you aren’t aware of changes in your industry, you’re not looking hard enough. And if your preference is to stick your head in the sand rather than stand tall and look for opportunities, there’s every chance your business is heading in the same direction as Kodak, Blackberry and Blockbuster. Once household names, now gone forever largely because they failed to adapt and change.
In this article, we remind you of the need to remain future focussed even when you’re up to your neck in day-to-day challenges.
Innovative change rarely happens overnight. Even new technologies go through stages of development as business owners test markets and refine products before rolling them out. Kodak, Blackberry and Blockbuster Video could see the future coming but chose to put their heads down and continue to do as they’d always done. Their failure to innovate while the world around them and technology moved on meant these brands met their ultimate demise.
When business conditions are tough, as they are currently for many business owners struggling with staffing issues, it’s easy to put business development on the back burner and spend more time on the tools. Then before you know it weeks, months, even years have passed and you’re still working in the business, and you realise it has failed to keep pace with change, let alone lead the way.
The business world is constantly adjusting and responding to emerging technologies, trends and changing client expectations. All business owners need to know what’s happening in their industry, what their competitors are doing and listen to their staff, customers and suppliers and embrace change to remain relevant and successful.
If your business is more than a couple of years old and you haven’t updated equipment, systems or technology you’re not only out of date, you’re at risk. Cyber security is a big issue, and if you suffer a breach your customers will lose trust that will take you a long time to claw back, if at all.
How businesses engage with customers has also changed. These days it’s mostly online and whether you ask for feedback or not you’ll get it, thanks to Google Business Reviews. You need to stay on your toes!
If you consider yourself old school and creating an online community through social media is low on your priority list, you won’t even know about the opportunities you’re missing.
Social media doesn’t just communicate with prospective customers and create new business, it’s where your future employees learn about you.
Similarly, if your website hasn’t been updated for a while, it’s slow to load and has outdated images, it isn’t likely to impress your clients or for that matter, convey current or correct information.
AI is another big business issue. You can be sceptical and ignore it or you can get excited and learn how AI can work for you. AI is here to stay and it’s already entrenched in business activities – think Amazon with its voice assistant Alexa, Apple with FaceID and Spotify with its AI DJ that debuted in February this year.
Ongoing business learning is a must and there are plenty of avenues for remaining informed. While there are all sorts of online resources that can provide information, it’s important to actually turn up to business networking and educational events.
For many of us, the Covid years changed our behaviour. Lockdowns normalised working from home and many of us we got used to it – flexible yes, but it’s isolating too.
If you haven’t been to an industry or Chamber of Commerce event or a conference for a while, it’s probably time you did.
The purpose of a keynote speaker at an event is to share information that’s new and thought provoking. Good speakers love nothing more than talking about the future, what society will look like and how AI and other technologies can create new and different opportunities for businesses.
Do yourself and your team a favour and get out more. Everyone can benefit from fresh perspectives and use them to initiate discussion about how new thinking can apply to your business.
Learning makes us more interesting. It might even inspire us, and inspiration, or rather the ability to inspire others, is a leadership quality necessary for implementing change. Even small changes that can make a big difference to your business future.
About Kodak, Blackberry & Blockbuster
Kodak was launched in 1888. Having invented the first roll-film automatic camera, this new technology touched the lives of people all over the world through photography and motion pictures. Kodak’s printing and publishing brought colour to magazines and books in the 1950s, then in the 60’s worked with NASA to develop space imaging. Kodak was there with the astronauts when they walked on the moon in 1969. In 2012, 124 years later this innovator filed for bankruptcy. Wall Street Journal published an article at that time, citing five reasons why it failed. You can read it here: The Demise of Kodak: Five Reasons
In the 2000s BlackBerry was a smartphone loved by executives all over the world. Such was the addiction they were often referred to as ‘crackberry’. At its peak in 2011, there were 85 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide. But BlackBerry failed to read the market and became stagnant. An apparent aversion to innovation was a key reason for its eventual demise. While Blackberry did get on the Touchscreen bandwagon, it was a year after Apple. Their phones were weighty and storing songs was limited to 50, there were few apps and no camera, while Apple and Android operating systems were progressive and user friendly. In 2016 BlackBerry stopped making its own phones. In 2022 it announced it would no longer support its devices.
Blockbuster Video once ruled supreme with over 9,000 brick and mortar stores, conveniently placed in neighbourhoods around the world, it offered a huge inventory of movies and video games to over 45 million customers. The last Blockbuster Video store, located in Perth, Australia valiantly held on until 2019 when it too closed its doors for the last time. While there were many business events and decisions that combined to cause Blockbusters failure, deciding not to acquire Netflix in 2000 for a paltry $US50 million is considered by some as its key business blunder. Netflix which became Blockbusters key market challenger, at its peak had a $US300 billion market cap. In October 2023 it was $167.02 billion.
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Core Business Accountants specialise in business advice for growing and mature family-owned and small and medium-sized businesses.