Page 57 - (DK) The Business Book

START SMALL, THINK BIG 55

See also: Gaining an edge 32–39 ■ Keep evolving business practice 48–51 ■ Creativity and invention 72–73 ■ Thinking
outside the box 88–89 ■ Changing the game 92–99 ■ Avoiding complacency 194–201

its effects. Consider, for example, Apple iTunes store offered 60,000 Product adaptation in the music
the music and movie industries. movies across 119 countries, and industry demonstrates the steady use of
New technology has completely, 35 million songs. new technology—from gramophone to
vinyl, cassette, CD, minidisc, and MP3
and very rapidly, changed the digital music file—as companies have
way that movies and music are Innovative methods sought to broaden the market for music.
purchased and consumed. For the Process adaptation involves finding
big movie and music businesses new ways to do things; it involves
(and all their associated suppliers introducing or removing processes.
and producers), survival has Competition from online sales and
required a high level of reinvention pirate streaming continue to affect
and adaptation. movie distribution companies such
This reinvention has come in the as Netflix. The response of this
form of both new products and new highly popular video streaming
processes. Product adaptation service was to make all the episodes
involves updates and redesign— of one television series (House
essentially, innovation and of Cards) available for download
invention. The movie industry has simultaneously; the rationale being
undergone many transformations that the risk of piracy would be
since the early days of black-and- lower if consumers were able to
white moving pictures, or “movies.” legally buy all episodes at once.
It has reinvented itself through For Netflix this bold strategy was
technology (from adding sound to not just a radical new process; it was
creating “impossible” computer- also an adaptation of the company’s
generated images); marketing entire business model. Still in the
devices, such as monthly access adolescent stages of growth, in 2012
cards; events, such as outdoor Netflix was primarily an online
screenings; and the growth of the streaming service, but for House of
multiplex to multiply visitor Cards it entered the world of
numbers and reduce turnaround production. By producing and
times. The newest product aimed distributing, Netflix was able to
at luring viewers away from illegal capture more profit and gain more
downloads and back into movie control over content. Netflix did not ❯❯
houses is Stereoscopic-3D—itself a
reinvention of an older idea.
Around the turn of the 21st
century, the music industry was
also struggling because of the drop
in sales of CDs, and began to refocus Excellent companies don’t
on live music and merchandise. believe in excellence—only in
However, both the music and movie constant improvement
industries found new life through and constant change.
digitization, such as Apple’s iPod Tom Peters
and iTunes. This revolutionary
US business expert (1942–)
combination of product and
process—Apple’s hardware and
software—made legal downloads of
music and movies more attractive
than illegal versions. In 2013 the