It is remarkable how many companies have yet to grasp the imminent need to innovate. Innovation has ceased to be a privilege and has become a matter of survival.
What is more: it is certain that some competitor will eventually destroy your business. While that has not happened yet, it is better that you do it yourself and lead the cannibalization process.
This week we witnessed a glimpse of just how fast evolution cycles are moving today. Elon Musk announced that by 2020 he expects to have a fleet of 1 million autonomous Tesla taxis on the streets of the US.
Should that come to pass, it will represent the fourth wave of a transformation process in the traditional taxi market. Uber was founded in 2009 as a ride-sharing alternative for people.
Then, in 2011, taxi apps emerged and achieved enormous success in many parts of the world — success that was curtailed, a few years later, by the overwhelming dominance of Uber, Didi, and Lyft.
Shortly after, impressive bike-sharing services appeared. Nearly 1 billion bikes are now on streets around the world — not to mention their cousins, electric scooters. And finally, we arrive at Elon Musk's announcement.
In other words, from the founding of Uber in 2009 to this week's announcement, it has been only 10 years.
And innovations that have continuously brought new challenges and opportunities to an industry that operated in a single way for an entire century.
This rapid movement in the market is not an outlier. Remember Nokia? In 2007 it was the leader in mobile phone sales, with 1 billion active devices and a 65 percent market share.
But that was the very year Apple launched the iPhone. And 2008 was when Google launched Android.
What happened next? By 2010, Nokia's share of the mobile phone market had fallen to 6 percent. In just 3 years, the company had collapsed.
A statement made by the company's CEO at the time became famous. Dismissing the potential of competitors, he said: "This is like peeing in your pants in winter. The temporary relief is followed by something even worse."
He could even accept that his customers might try rivals' devices, but he was certain they would come back to his products. He was gravely mistaken.
The worst path a large company can take is one of contempt toward innovations coming from the outside. Because when they emerge, you might interpret them as an earthquake.
It lasts a few seconds, it frightens, but it soon stops. What you forget is that after the earthquake comes the tsunami, which devastates everything in its path.
That is how innovation cycles work. At first, the iPhone seemed like the idea of a madman. After all, since the dawn of time, phones have buttons! From that point on, the rest is history.
Source: StartSe