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every strategic inflection point characterized by a ‘10X’ change? And does every ‘10X’ change lead to a strategic inflection point?” I think for all practical purposes the answer to both of these questions is yes.
doesn’t do business the way you are used to having business done, but it will lure your customers away just the same. The story of Next will give an example of that.
far superior competitor appearing on the scene is a mandate for you to change. Continuing to do what worked before doesn’t work anymore.
was as if Steve Jobs and his company had gone into a time capsule when they started Next.
Will digital entertainment replace movies as we know them? Will digital information replace newspapers and magazines? Will remote banking render conventional banks relics of the past? Will the wider availability of interconnected
A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done.
think all these factors played a part, but the last one—the resistance to facing a painful new world—was the most important.
Harvard Business School Professor Richard Tedlow came to the conclusion that businesses fail either because they leave their customers, i.e., they arbitrarily change a strategy that worked for them in the past (the obvious change), or because their customers leave them (the subtle one).
Or is it a “signal,” a fundamental change in whom we sell to and whom we service? I think it is the latter.
The combination of factors results in a strategic inflection point that can be even more dramatic than a strategic inflection point caused by just one force.
It’s yet another example illustrating that the person who is the star of a previous era is often the last one to adapt to change, the last one to yield to the logic of a strategic inflection point and tends to fall harder than most.
Second sourcing, once common in our industry, refers to a practice in which a supplier, in order to make sure that his product is widely accepted, turns to his
In theory, this unnatural competitive act works out as a win for all parties: the developer of the product benefits by a wider customer acceptance of the product as a result of a broader supplier base; the second-source supplier, who is a recipient of the technology, clearly benefits by getting valuable technology while giving little in return. And the customer for the product in question benefits by having a larger number of suppliers who will compete for his business. In practice, however, things don’t often work out that well.
Our competitors were reluctant to pay for technology that we used to give away practically for free.
First, our influence on our customers increased. From their standpoint, this might have appeared as a “10X” force. Second, since most PCs increasingly were built on microprocessors from one supplier, they became more alike.
crosscurrents you are experiencing right now represent one.
their work force was accustomed to a paternalistic work environment.
whether a company became a winner or a loser was related to its degree of adaptability.
Our instructor played this scene over and over to illustrate a superbly enacted instance of building up the determination necessary to undertake the hard, unpleasant and treacherous task of leading a group of people through an excruciatingly tough set of changes—the
takes objectivity, the willingness to act on your convictions and the passion to mobilize people into supporting those convictions. This sounds like a tall order, and it is.
This device became a big hit. Our new challenge became how to satisfy demand for it.
Through our struggle with the first two technological curiosities that didn’t sell and with the third one that sold but that we had such a hard time producing,
We became good at solving problems. We became highly focused on tangible results (our word for it is “output”). And from all the early bickering, we developed a style of ferociously arguing with one another while remaining friends (we call this “constructive confrontation”).
“Win with the 10% rule….Find AMD [another American company] and Intel sockets….Quote 10% below their price…If they requote, go 10% AGAIN….Don’t quit till you
What we were desperately trying to do was to earn a premium for our product in the marketplace as we couldn’t match the Japanese downward pricing spiral.
Microprocessors are the brains of the computer; they calculate while memory chips merely store.
But after the long period of buildup, we couldn’t wind down fast enough to match the market slide. We were still building inventory even as our business headed south.
suppose that even though our minds were made up about where we were going our emotions were still holding both of us back from full commitment to the new direction.
People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.
the new managers come unencumbered by such emotional involvement and therefore are capable of applying an impersonal logic to the situation.
they must adopt an outsider’s intellectual objectivity.
also learned that strategic inflection points, painful as they are for all participants, provide an opportunity to break out of a plateau and catapult to a higher level of achievement.
men and women lower in the organization, unbeknownst to us, got us ready to execute the strategic
turn that saved our necks and gave us a great future.
This is not unusual. People in the trenches are usually in touch with impending changes early.
The way IBM and Intel responded to the x-ray technology threat showed that one company deemed it “signal,” while the other classified it “noise.”
Meanwhile, our equivocation caused our customers
wonder what Intel really stood for, the 486 or the 1860?
your key competitor about to change?
you had just one bullet in a figurative pistol, whom among your many competitors would you save it for?
In an analogous fashion, you should ask, is your key complementer about to change? Does the company that in past years mattered the most to you and your business seem less important today?
Do people seem to be “losing it” around you? Does it seem that people who for years had been very competent have suddenly gotten decoupled from what really matters?
When they don’t get it or you don’t get it, it may not be because of encroaching age; it may be because the “it” has changed around you.
Cassandra was the priestess who foretold the fall of Troy. Likewise, there are people who are quick to recognize impending change and cry out an early warning.
Yet I have learned to respect changes in the tone of messages from people in the field.
Don’t argue with them; even though it’s time-consuming, do your best to hear them out, to learn what they know and to understand why it affects them the way it does.
Think of it this way: when spring comes, snow melts first at the periphery, because that’s where it’s most exposed.
Sometimes a Cassandra brings not tidings of a disaster but a new way of looking at things.
Peter Drucker quotes a definition of an entrepreneur as someone who moves resources from areas of lower productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.
A danger in assessing the significance of changes lies in what I call the trap of the first version.
