From DSC:
Hmmm…how true: “…the digital age rewards change and punishes stasis.” (source)
Which reminds me of a photo I took just yesterday morning at one of the malls in our area, where a local Sears store is closing.
It made me wonder…if Sears could do it all over again, what would they do differently? If they had a time machine, would they go back in time and work to become the new Amazon.com?
By the way, this picture is for those people who continue to dismiss the need to change and to adapt. Surveying the relevant landscapes is an increasingly important thing for all of us to do, especially given that we are now on an exponential pace of technological change.
Companies must be open to radical reinvention to find new, significant, and sustainable sources of revenue. Incremental adjustments or building something new outside of the core business can provide real benefits and, in many cases, are a crucial first step for a digital transformation. But if these initiatives don’t lead to more profound changes to the core business and avoid the real work of rearchitecting how the business makes money, the benefits can be fleeting and too insignificant to avert a steady march to oblivion.
Addendum on 2/10/17
- Macy’s earnings: Shifts in retail are hurting major players — from marketwatch.com by Tonya Garcia
Macy’s has assets like real estate and brand identity, but shifts in the sector are putting pressure on earningsExcerpt:
Even a major player like Macy’s M, +1.51% isn’t immune to retail’s struggles. The sector is experiencing a dramatic shift to e-commerce and changes in consumer tastes and shopping behavior that have put pressure on department store earnings, and on the industry as a whole. Macy’s has already announced 100 store closures and thousands of job cuts, in addition to a reassessment of its real-estate assets. Now there’s buzz from reports about buyout talks with Hudson’s Bay Co. HBC, parent to Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue.