It is about the periodic wiping out of entire industries and most of the companies in them.

Nothing lasts forever. Old industries are replaced by new industries.

But not until because I don't see the point until you have read a dozen case histories where firms wound up annihilated by technologies that they knew about, which they tried to proactively address, and the reasons why they couldn't succeed.

Look around. We have real world examples happening right now.

Again, technology tends toward commoditization (if that is a word).

The market you have today, will not be around forever.

Understand the cycle.

I should have put "or" between those numbers. They do not depend upon each other.

I'll read the book. When the library gets it. I've read way too many books on business cycles and disruptive technologies and commodities and TQA and six sigma and so forth.

To put it in simple terms, nothing lives forever. One day, your product or company or market or industry will die and/or be replaced by the new product or company or market or industry.

What's the best you can do with your product and company in your market / industry before one or more of them die?

And do you have an exit strategy?

Now, I'll see how (or if) my views change after reading that book.

They see it. They understand the impact.

But they are designed and optimized for one specific approach.

Theoretically, there will be an inflection point.

If they could see that...
-and-
CORRECTLY predict the new market
-and-
CORRECTLY re-structure their company
-then-
They could succeed in the new market.

The problem is that while it is possible to see the change coming, it is very difficult to predict what the new market will be like.

Real world example: MS vs Linux. The changes (there are a few) are already hitting us. We know that the old approach will no longer be viable (for a number of reasons) in the new market.

But no one (except IBM?) has been able to put together a company that can exploit the new market (translation: turn a reliable profit).

Once the changes have swept over us and the old approach is dead, many new approaches will be tried (and many will fail).

Eventually, someone will formulate an approach and a structure that will extract a reliable profit from the new market.

In hindsight, this will be "obvious". :)

But, during the change, people are still trained to think in the old modes. They still see things as they were BEFORE the change. They are trying to fit the NEW model to their OLD model and they're getting confused by the bits that don't fit.

:)

Explaining it is simple.

Being able to exploit it or giving advice on how to exploit it is hard.

:)

Again, MS vs Linux. I think the new model will REQUIRE Internet access to centralized databases but de-centralized distribution points. You won't pay for the software, but you'll pay for the service to keep updated. Nickel and dime them. Internet access is the key. Without that, you don't need to stay current. But everyone will be connected because other things they do will require it. So everyone will need to stay current. Give away the shaver and sell the blades. Cheaply. So cheaply that people won't even blink when charged.

Compare that to the current system of selling the original package for hundreds or thousands of dollars and then planning to do the same in a few years (upgrades).

And that's why they're road kill. That big of a change simply does not happen in companies.

MS is attempting it, though. Bill Gates is a marketing genius (despite his other flaws). But they will fail. The new approach does not generate the revenues that the old approach did. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Thought exercise. Suppose MS, on Monday, announced that all versions of Windows would be $10 (per mac address). And for that price, you'd get 1 year of free updates. You could install whatever version of Windows you wanted and have the latest security patches. For another $10 (per mac address), you could install whatever version of MSOffice you wanted (and have free updates for a year). Of course, the file formats would change once a year. And MS would even sell you a caching server if you wanted one.

What would that do to their company short term and long term?

And that is what it means to be able to see the inflection point and to be able to predict the future market and how to exploit it.

Road kill happens because the weight lifter cannot become a runner over night.