I want to think about two recent posts made by the brilliant Seth Godin and how they apply to the way the publishing industry should think about evolving to meet the needs of the distant future not simply look at what we will be doing around the corner.
Most of us assume a single range of focus that we care about. And it’s usually right around the corner, or even closer. Is that the place to be focusing your brand or your business or your life?”
How far away is your future?, Seth Godin, December 27, 2009
If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do.
Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever.
“If your ship is sinking, get out now. By the time the rats start packing, it’s way too late.”
It’s not the rats you need to worry about, Seth Godin, December 28, 2009
Godin has a way of distilling ideas that are difficult to grasp into that which make perfect sense, he has certainly done that here.
With hardcopy periodical circulation still in a decline that is irreversible (they’ve abandoned the newsagent. It’s over, as Godin might say) what value will these publications have in 10 years time? What will the audience look like? What will the editorial teams look like? Where will they be working from? Who will they be reporting to? In 3 months even in a year the answers to these question will be the same as you would get tomorrow. In 10 years time the answers will be very different. It’s those answers we need to be thinking about now in order to evolve faster than those against which we compete.
The decline is too steep to be the end of a normal life-cycle, 2009 has been a 10 year storm, a fundamental innovation needs to occur to recover. As Steve Ballmer said in June “I don’t think we are in a recession, I think we have reset,” he said. “A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don’t think we will. We have reset and won’t rebound and re-grow.” All content consumed will be digital, we can [only] debate if that may be in one, two, five or 10 years,” added Ballmer.
There are already opportunities that might be presenting the green shoots of growth, but they are already here, they’re just around the corner if we want them (iphone apps etc). We should not just be looking around the corner for the answers but over the horizon.
Natural selection applies in business as it does in nature, the first to evolve and meet the new requirements of the environment in which we compete will win, the others will die.
