Markets and competitors change. Are you being left behind?
Over the years, I have often heard the complaint from CEO friends that they have become so swamped by the demands of their growing businesses that they feel themselves further and further from the center of their industry, no longer at the forefront of information and competitive development.
It is a real risk for the successful entrepreneur that the daily demands of business make it more and more difficult to know the pulse of the industry, which becomes more and more risky as decisions are made and resources allocated to projects or products that may no longer be as attractive as before.
During the past several years, some very big bets have been made by large companies and well-healed entrepreneurs in old media, newspapers and TV stations. Although newspapers have a window in which to reinvent themselves by providing electronic delivery and TV the same by recasting into more niche markets through division of digital channels into niche-serving slices, I doubt that these bets will prove profitable in the end, because of the overwhelming availability of free media using the web. Were these companies and entrepreneurs out to a long lunch during the media transformation? Or do they know something all of us commoners do not?
