disruptive

Companies that are facing industry disruptions are bad enough; during these times, leadership faces the most important test – the ability to lead during a crisis. The need of foresight, change and organization design are what true leadership looks like.

Jeremy England, a rising star in the world of physics, has made quite a stir with his ideas about the meaning of life. In a nutshell, England argues that while disorder in the universe tends to increase over time, living things harness energy around them to create order from randomness.

It’s no secret that big corporations aren’t what they used to be. In recent years, we’ve seen paragons such as General Motors, Kodak and Blockbuster have go bankrupt even as upstarts like Tesla, Instagram and Netflix rocket forward. The average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has fallen from more than 60 years to less than 20.

At the early stages of the Serious Games movement, in many cases they were made available to users free of charge or distributed within the client organization. Serious Games used to lack the budgets of entertainment games, so producers usually did not develop their own game engines (which could cost upwards of $5 million and 3-5 years of time), but instead leased popular game engines for game play. 

When Alfred Sloan created the modern corporation at General Motors, he based it on the military. The company was split into divisions, each with its own leadership. Information flowed up, orders went down and your rank determined your responsibility.

Tradition embraces stability. Time honored principles get that way because they have strong track records of success. The tried and true, extrapolated into the future, often looks like a sure thing, while deviating from historical norms can look downright foolish.

In the late 1960’s, minimills like Nucor started using a new process that could produce low grades of steel more efficiently than the big integrated steel makers. These, however, were the lowest margin products in the industry and didn’t seem much of a threat to the big guys.

If I’d asked customers what they want, they’d have said more convenience and relevance.

Look familiar? I’ve riffed on that Henry Ford quote about faster horses, yada, yada. It’s not too far off from what customers would theoretically have been seeking in faster horses.

Many products out there are good and probably good enough. But strategists would say that companies need more great products with good designs to succeed as there are too many me-too products out there. It is half the truth. There are many kinds of good-enoughs and you need to put it in a big strategy context. Read on and I will explain why.