Mini-review: Predicting the Turn

Starting with salutary tale of a Kodak - the company which invented the digital camera but failed to capitalise on it, Knox first makes the case for taking digital disruption seriously and then explains what to do about it.

First, he suggests you have to overcome any tendency to think of digital as a vertical - i.e. about marketing, when it is a horizontal force - capable of rewriting the business as a whole.

Act like a 30 year old startup

Intuit CEO on the transition from one off purchases recurring subscriptions 

The remaining part of the book covers four strategies for tackling disruption:

• Acquire: Buy a startup challenger outright
• Invest: Make an investment to further your financial and/or strategic goals
• Partnership: Collaborate with relevant companies - small & large. 
• Build: Figure out how to disrupt the disruptor by developing a competing product/service

and how to implement them including case studies, tips and possible pitfalls. For example:

1. Don't mistake a disruptor for an outsider who doesn't know the business.
2. Technology potentially massively expands the market. The total available market is a measure of how big the market could be in the future. For example, when horses were replaced by cars -we ended up with a lot more cars than horses. Uber's market is not just the taxi business, but also car rental and potentially car ownership.
3. Partnerships. Be aware that startups have to move much faster than incumbents and plan accordingly. 
4. Disrupt the disruptors through "search and reapply". Facebook may have done just this to Snapchat.

Most of PepsiCo's major strategic successes are ideas we borrowed from the marketplace - often from small regional or local competitors

Andrall E. Pearson 

Overall, this is a good short introduction into how to tackle the challenge of potentially disruptive startups. I learned a lot from it, but those of you more familiar with the world of strategic investment might find this treads familiar ground.