For anyone over the age of 40, the world that they grew up in was radically different from the world they live in today. The tremendous change in our lifestyles, fueled by the technology that supports it has been tremendous. And the change is still on, only faster.
For anyone over the age of 40,
the world that they grew up in was radically different from the world they live in today. The tremendous change in our lifestyles, fueled by the technology that supports it has been tremendous. And the change is still on, only faster. The incremental difference between the technology of today and that of five years in the future will be far more than that between five years in the past and today. The impact of these advancements is that it has completely changed the way of life of the people. And it has also had a not so subtle influence on the business world.
The way enterprises buy, develop, sell, ship, market, and engage with the customer has undergone a major transformation in the past decade. The focus of every organization has always been the customer. However, it is only now, that the customer is really engaged with the enterprise. Personalization is the theme today. From search results to advertisements, everything is tailor made for the person who is the target. All this has been made possible by the advent of revolutionary trends in consumer IT like social media and networking, mobility, and cloud.
Success in business today does not come from just the usual factors like hard-work, good management, and funds. To play in the information based market today, you need to evolve your business model itself to conform to the latest trends. You need to invest in technologies that put you where you want to be – right at the user’s fingertips, in the center of his / her attention. It is no longer a choice either. You have to do it if you want to even compete in the arena. Technology is almost the entry fee to the right to do business today. If you do not pay heed, you run the risk of going down the path of some of the others who refused to change.
Let us discuss the fate of some of the most popular brands that succumbed to their own reluctance to evolve. There are enough and more examples from all verticals of organizations that chose bankruptcy over evolution. In the discussion below, you will also find the names of the modern businesses that replaced them.
1. Media Rentals – The famous movie and game rental chain is a classic victim of modernization. The once omnipresent company with over 9000 stores and 60,000 employees went bankrupt in 2011. This happened despite the fact that people in the US are renting more movies every year. On the other hand, Netflix, the online streaming movie rental company, amounted to one quarter of the total Internet traffic in the US.
2. Online search and communication – Remember the symbol of internet in the 80s and early 90s? America Online (AOL) was the savior for the newbies who got access to the internet, but did not know how to use it. AOL was the face of the internet for people worldwide. However, with Google and Facebook coming in to the picture, its ‘walled garden’ approach was replaced by the open view that users loved. Today, the market cap of AOL is around $ 3 billion, down from 250 billion at its peak.
3. Book sellers – Borders, the popular chain of bookshops went bankrupt in 2011, thanks to Amazon, who made buying and reading books easier than ever through its products and mobile apps.
There are many such stories where the modern beat the traditional. It needs to be well understood that antiquated business paradigms are useless in the modern marketplace. You need to adopt a more modern approach to grow. Go digital, go social, and go mobile.
