Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
@pwalker8. It is ironic that this piece appeared the very same year that Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail" was first published. B&N faced the Innovator's Delimma and, like most large firms in that position, failed to recognise let alone meet the challenge. This failure was compounded by some terrible decisions. Their continued survival is now most unlikely.
Your argument is in fact supported by Jeff Bezos's reply quoted in the OP. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Had B&N read and taken his comment seriously who knows where we may have been today.
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Certainly that's true.
I didn't realize that the Christensen book had been out that long. I picked it up last winter.
I would argue that B&N's issue wasn't an Innovator's Dilemma situation. They understood the need for a Website and an ebook reader, even if they were late to the table. That's not a killer per se. Apple is rarely the first to the table with their innovations. There were mp3 players before the iPod and smartphones before the iPhone. They just brought superior user interface and vision to the table. B&N could have done the same if they had understood the vision thing and the possibilities.
I give Bezos a lot of credit. He had the vision. The question for Amazon is will they move to the next step from a vision point of view, or will they focus on cost cutting.