It’s good to be focused on your own industry. But that leaves you reacting to outside technologies and business models. If you are in this reactive position, you carry a lot of risk.
AS GOOD AS YOU ARE — and we believe that you are very good at your business — there are major technical innovations that are happening outside the lens of your day-to-day operations.
In almost all cases, taken individually, there is a low risk to you from outside-the-industry business models and technologies. However, when one of these technologies jumps across an industry and gets traction, massive value fractures occur.
Craigslist, Skype, digital cameras — they all moved faster than expected in new markets and big companies lost huge revenue streams.
If you aren’t part of a group that is tracking these forces, discussing them, and investing in new business models — then you may always be in reactive mode: the worst possible position.