How often does this happen in the business world? A company or interest group fights new trends in the hope of keeping the status quo. In the meantime the new trend sweeps past them at high speed.
One such instance has just happened in the eBook environment. The latest version of the Kindle, version 2.0, Amazon’s electronic reader was launched with a text-to-speech feature.
The Authors Guild has managed to curtail this feature. This will now be optional for publishers. The Guild has been fighting this feature stating that it had the potential to turn the Kindle 2 into an audiobook player.
Amazon has given in to pressure from The Authors Guild and in future publishers will have the final say as to whether the books may be read aloud by the reader.
How many organisations out there miss the train because they are so busy trying to protect their interests they do not see that a) progress will happen despite all their objections and b) there could be opportunities if only they stopped raising the drawbridge to hide in their castles.
It would not surprise me if a fair number of business failures, especially from companies that had been around for a while, are due to the fact that they either did not recognise the changes that were happening or were fighting them until the day they had to close their doors.
There are of course some great successes too. For instance bicycles. Although they went through a major slump when cars came about, the industry re-invented itself as a sport accessory. Let’s see if the car industry can re-invent itself. And what about the music industry and it’s form of delivery the CDs?
As the world goes through another wave of technological changes it will be interesting to see what manages to stay with us, albeit in changed form, and what disappears for ever.
If you run your business thinking that you are doing everything right and that no new technology can affect you, it is surely just a matter of time until you are forced to close your doors. Stay with the times. You never know. The opportunities could be even greater if you run with the new stuff!
on Apr 25th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Hi there,
Maybe if Amazon had consulted with the folks whose merchandise they sell (ie, authors and publishers) before adding a new feature to the Kindle, they could have avoided this whole mess. It’s all very nice to ‘run with the new stuff’ until its someone else whose running away with your stuff.
The Authors Guild knows they didn’t come out looking good by throwing a monkey-wrench in the wheels of progress, but they had a good point and Amazon acceded to their request.
If history is anything to go by, text-to-speech will improve to the point where it will impact audiobooks, and who knows what other technologies will the written word will be subjected to. The message to take away from this is be aware of where the other players are on the field before you try an end run around them.
on Apr 25th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
@Bob Martinengo thanks for your excellent comment.
Do you know whether Amazon did or not? Wouldn’t mind knowing that. I can’t imagine not though. But one never knows with what liberties the big boys take.
Good points.