Can a business appear healthy and yet actually be dead? To answer this, think about driving at 60 miles per hour. At that speed we are supposed to keep 60 feet of distance from the car in front. Imagine a driver on the highway at 60 mph - when a fog descends on him so he can only see 10 feet out. If you were to measure the vital signs of both the driver and car - you would find both were healthy. But not for long - because sooner or later the driver will come to a bend in the road, an oncoming car, a stopped vehicle, or a cliff.
Organizations used to have stable industries, predictable customers, and five and ten year strategic plans. Today whole industries are being turned completely upside down in two years. Seemingly healthy companies that can't recognize and respond quickly to change may be dead but just don't know it yet. In October 2001, Polaroid went filed for bankruptcy protection. The company that came to define instant photography was blindsided by the rapid rise of digital photography. Microsoft was initially blindsided by the rapid rise of the wWeb. Wal-Mart became the largest company worldwide in 2002, while K-Mart filed for bankruptcy.
In 1999, an 18 year-old decimated the profit model of a $40 billion dollar industry. Shawn Fanning released Napster and within 18 months the software had been downloaded by 62 million times. In February 2001, it facilitated three billion music file transfers. When Napster was forced to close by court order, 90 file sharing services spraung up in its place. By September 2001, these collectively were facilitating more music file transfers than Napster at its' peak.
Organizations are living in a fog - emergent trends, information explosion, technological innovation, shifting regulation, changing competition and reversing markets. We are living in what John Chambers, CEO of Cisco calls "low visibility." While driving in the fog at with at 60 mph with only 10 feet of visibility, organizations have to either slow down (we can't - we're being exhorted to go faster), or accelerate recognition and response to change six fold.
Central Questions
* How can business leaders avoid being blindsided?
* Why are companies and even whole industries blindsided?
* What forces guarantee that organizations will be blindsided with increasing frequency?
* How can business leaders identify early warning signs?
* How can you put in place systems and structures that will prevent your organization from being blindsided?
* And then knowing all this how can you blindside your competition?
How can business leaders avoid being blindsided? Jim Harris has been helping organizations and leaders all over the world successfully identify and respond faster to emerging trends. In Blindsided! he brings these skills directly to you, highlighting best practices by interviewing dozens of business leaders and innovators - to get first hand insight into the processes they have successfully used. He looks in detail at case studies such as the recording industry (vs. Napster), Polaroid, Microsoft and Cisco. How were these companies blindsided and what could they have done to prevent it? He offers a unique series of tools, techniques and strategies to help business leaders identify trends earlier and more accurately predict their impact. These new tools will help leaders build consensus faster within organizations where there is conflict, chaos and confusion.
Why Are Companies Blindsided?
The speed of change - driven by new technology, mergers, competition coming out of left field, all mean the business landscape is more chaotic, confusing and complex than ever before. And the speed of this change is accelerating. While it took TV 10 years to attract 10 million users, it took Netscape 28 months, Hotmail 18 months and Napster only 9 months. The chances of being blindsided have never been greater. In a world where chaos is the norm, Blindsided! is a practical guide to embracing change.
