Here’s a list of companies who should’ve done something, yet instead, let someone else do it for them. And in being asleep at the wheel, they will never be as powerful (read relevant) again.
Yellow Pages | should have become… | |
Encyclopaedia Britannica | should have become… | Wikipedia |
RCA / Sony / BMG / EMI / Warner | should have become… | iTunes |
Newspaper classifieds | should have become… | Craigs List |
Trading Post | should have become… | eBay |
Barns & Noble | should have become… | Amazon |
Industry X | could well become… | Your startup |
—
The key point is this. The future doesn’t care about your legacy, or how things were done in the past, it only cares about what people actually want. And people don’t care about your existing infrastructure, they only care about themselves.
There’s a million more of these examples out there, and many more to come. The question is which industry will you disrupt because they are too in love with their existing infrastructure?