Volume 4, Issue 3

Absolutely, but this needs to be and ongoing process and it has to be organized. Let me give you an example of a company that I’ve worked with — A fairly big one. A leader in worldwide specialized field. And every three months, a group of people from the organization - younger people, junior people, but never the same people – sit down and look at one segment of the company’s products, services, processes, or policies with a question: "If we didn’t do this already, would we go into the way we are now?" And if the answer is no, then the question is what would we do? Every four or five years, that company has systematically abandoned or at least modified every single one of its products and processes, and especially its services. That’s the secret of its growth and its profitability.

A company should be able to eliminate its waste. The human body does it automatically. In the corporate body, there is enormous resistance. Abandonment isn’t that easy, and don’t underrate the effect abandonment

By looking at every change, looking out every window and asking, Could this be an opportunity? Is this new thing a  .

genuine change, or simply a fad? And the difference is very simple: A change is something people do and a fad is something people talk about. An enormous amount of talk is fad. I have an old friend and he is an important man at a big institution. I think he was being accused of never changing anything. He had a very prosperous, very successful organization, and he said buying a book about change is much cheaper than changing anything. You must also ask yourself if these transitions, these changes, are an opportunity or a threat. If you start out by looking at change as threats,

you will never innovate. Don’t dismiss something simply because this not what you had planned. The unexpected is often the best source of innovation.

I think it’s too early to speculate about ecommerce. One never knows how a new distribution channel will change what is being distributed and how customer values will change. If ecommerce takes only a relatively small part of the total consumer business (and it may take a fairly large part), it will have a profound impact and force existing distribution channels to change radically.

I think one high probability guess is a system that uses ecommerce to sell and a physical location to deliver. That is already being developed very rapidly in Japan. Ico-Yokado is probably the world’s largest retailer today. And they own, among other things, the Japanese 7-Eleven stores. Japan has 10,000 7-Elevens. Increasingly, they have deals with all kinds of suppliers where customers buy online and pick up at the nearest 7-Eleven. Because a central problem of ecommerce is delivery.

The delivery has to be local. That is fairly easy if you sell books. Books have