by: Idris Mootee
I received a
lot of emails with questions on the presentation I posted yesterday. They were
mostly asking about how industries converge and how creative destruction
happens. Not a simple question to answer but we all agree that “drawing of lines” between industry
boundaries is becoming ever more difficult (or even possible at all) in today’s
disruptive technology-driven business climate.
Products
become services and services are powered by software. Then the interface deisgn
humanized the interactions and thus becomes the brand. And your brand is out
there in the networks which leaves you with little control. Social networks
will soon be competing with search technologies; portable gaming device (you
can make VOIP calls with Sony PSP and soon mobile calls) will compete with PDAs
and even readers are now competing against media publishers.
The blurring
of interindustry boundaries is attributed to such factors such as deregulation,
globalization but mostly strategic (and democratic) use of technologies.
Most
industries go through a “shakeout”
phase during which the number of players in the industry declines. Industry
output generally continues to rise, however, which implies a reallocation of
capacity from exiting firms to incumbents and new entrants. Thus shakeouts seem
to be classic creative destruction episodes.
Shakeouts of firms tend to occur sooner in industries where technological
progress is rapid (thanks to Google). I often employ scenario
planning to help clients imagine the future. Here are a few interesting
slides I want to share. This was developed a year ago by Mike Smit and I
to show hypothetically when two companies which operate in different industries
can combine to create new markets. It is part of a larger “futuring” exercise and here are a few
of those slides. The idea is “what if Google
bought Addidas in 2010?”
Original Post:http://mootee.typepad.com/innovation playground/2007/06/creative-collis.html
