The Lesson of Commoditization: From The Washington Post to Higher Education — from LinkedIn.com by Jeff Selingo
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
You have to ask yourself whether you’re inherently a commodity business or inherently an innovation business.
— A.G. Lafley, CEO Procter & Gamble
Many colleges face the same problem The Washington Post does, and of course, they charge thousands of dollars more for their product. The owners of The Post realized that they needed to get out of the commodity business and into the innovation business, and there was no better person to lead the newspaper through that transformation than Jeff Bezos.
…figure out what is truly innovative and different about the campus experience, double down on that and let other players with less expensive models serve the commodity market. In the end, don’t be afraid of putting a piece of what you do now out of business.
From DSC:
That last sentence speaks directly to what Steve Jobs believed and lived by:
If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.