Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcohen
The one such shift that comes to mind is AT&T.
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Minor point of fact: today's AT&T only shares the name with Classic Ma Bell.
(Just as the Modern Atari bears no great linkage to Nolan Bushnell's Atari)
The current AT&T is actually Cingular; they rebranded themselves with the AT&T name after they bought the last remnants of AT&T. But the other important chunks of Ma Bell (Bell Labs, their computer division, their manufacturing division) those are all gone.
Today's AT&T is barely more related to Ma Bell than the makers of RCA TVs to the Radio Corporation of America.
I'm not sure there is any industry-leading company outside the technology arena that *has* successfully adapted to and prospered after a paradigm-shifting technology disruption. (In the Tech arena, Apple, HP, Adobe, and Microsoft stand as examples of companies that that successfully navigated multiple tech disruptions and continued growing through it all by reinventing themselves; most recently, Apple.)
Borders, as the article points out, didn't really *try* to adapt; they just tried to "ride it out" as if they thought that online sales was just a fad. To be honest, that they've lasted this long is actually a bit surprising considering all the mistakes they've made in the last 16 years.
Much as I'd like to see them survive (they are the only book superstore anywhere near me these days) I'm not sure that even a bailout by the publishers can bring them back to relevance.