Steve Jobs certainly gets it. The unveiling of the iPad (and subsequently, the iPad 2) was not merely a product launch, but a defining moment in which Apple shared its grand vision for the consumer electronics marketplace. The company symbolically stepped away from the familiar confines of the PC era, leaving behind its own initial core business along with the competition.
“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to step away from the shore," said Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide. In Gide's remark, the notion of new discovery is linked to bravery. In today’s marketplace, I w ould argue that doing something unprecedented is not just adventurous but imperative, and that the far bigger risk is focusing on current competitors as the barometer of strategy. Eliminating competition by trying to beat it is dangerously shortsighted. It deflects the attention and the resources of an organization away from the far more important and exciting question of how to shape consumer lifestyles.
A great illustration of this predicament is what happened to Kodak in 2003, when it was caught sleeping as the world transitioned from film to digital photography. The company severely misjudged the speed and impact of this transition and its lifestyle implications. As a result, Kodak's core business, in which it was clearly dominating its competitors, was on a fast track to obsolescence. What were the consequences? Well, after 74 years, Kodak was delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial 30 Index of leading American companies in 2004. Kodak then embarked on a rad ical and painful restructuring to...
