Welcome to Advance Business strategy, Module One, Strategy over Time. In this module we're gonna talk about the dynamics of competition. We're gonna introduce the idea of the competitive life cycle. We're gonna discuss how incumbent firms often face hardship when they face new technologies that disrupt their markets. And we're gonna discuss ways in which firms might deal with these disruptions and analyze these disruptions that they might face. I'd like to begin with a story of four iconic firms. Firms that in their day were the most successful within their industry and marketplace. The first, Studebaker Brothers. After the Civil War in the United States, the Studebaker Brothers emerged as the premiere maker of horse drawn carriages. At the height of their popularity, they demanded a sixty percent market share within that market, and then along came an innovation, the one depicted next to me here. The horseless carriage, better known as the automobile. Now in fact, the Studebaker brothers made the transition from horse-drawn carriages to the automobile. In the picture, we actually see the famous inventor Thomas Edison sitting next to one of the Studebaker brothers in their new electric vehicle that they had come to the market with. In fact, the Studebaker brothers did sell automobiles for a number of years. However they never had the same success that they had in the horse drawn carriage market. And eventually they went bankrupt and out of business. Remington typewriter. Remington typewriter was the premier typewriter maker at the beginning of the 20th century. At the height of their popularity they commanded am 80% market share within the New York City office environment. Now you might imagine what happened to them. First we saw the introduction of the electronic typewriter, pioneered by IBM and then eventually we saw the entry of personal computing and word processing. And, as you can imagine, Remington went out of business eventually. Kodak, more recent example. Kodak was the premiere maker of film for film-based cameras. Over the twentieth century, over a hundred year reign, they were the leaders within this field, a highly successful and profitable company. More recently within the last few years they've had to declare bankruptcy. One might imagine what happened here. The advent of digital photography, and in particular the rise of smart phones and the like-as camera devices, rendered their core capability in film obsolete. Now while Kodak still survives today, they are just a shell of where they were even ten years ago. What's interesting about the Kodak story was that it's wasn't that Kodak didn't see this coming. In fact, Kodak had been working on digital imaging technology way back even in the early 1980's. It even had some of the first patents for digital imaging. They had made numerous investments into digital technology and brought a number of interesting innovations to market. Even as late as 2004, they were one of the leaders in digital point and shoot cameras. Yet at the end of the day they still weren't able to make the transition, and as a result, are just a shell of their former self. Last but not least, Sears. Sears was the preeminent retailer through much of the 20th century in the United States. They started out as a catalog business. Their catalog, so popular, people called it the bible of retailing. And then eventually they moved on to a new business model, where they were often the anchor of large, suburban malls. Well, over the last 20 years or so, the market hasn't been as kind to Sears. And in particular what's interesting and why I bring them up, it wasn't necessarily a new technology that has made Sears struggle, but the new business model. A business model pioneered by the likes of Walmart. Where we have these large big box stores that pioneered where they would locate these stores and also a lot of the distribution and logistics behind having those stores. Now Sears still exists today, but once again, like some of the other examples, they're a shell of their former self. So while back in the 1970s, we might site them as one of the premiere examples of successful firms within the United States, today they struggle to survive. All four of these examples highlight the importance of thinking about time and thinking about dynamics. Each of these were successful companies by any measure in their time period. However, circumstances changed. New technologies came about, new business models came about, and they were unable to make the transition to those new demands. So our topic for this module is to understand these types of life cycles. These types of dynamics. And ultimately, try to provide advice for how you can survive and even thrive In the throes of these types of disruptions.
