Even in today’s technological age, multinational corporations with thousands of employees still fail to grasp the basics of technology, the internet and how that impacts their business. How can a company, with resources coming out of their ears still not manage to get even the basics right? In today’s article I hope to identify some key factors…
Senior Management don’t get the internet
This is probably the key factor to most companies downfall with regards to technology. Senior management really struggle with what’s happening in Technology, what it means for them, and how they can exploit it. Example, the music industry. Not one, two but pretty much all record companies big and small just did not get the internet. Due to their ignorance, or just plain stupidity they wrote it off as a fad, and worse – a threat to the business they know and love.
This was probably the greatest example of how the mighty can fall in the last 10 years. Record execs, mostly old school fossils still clinging onto their vinyl records could not understand why people would want to listen to music without owning a physical product. They were right – for 20-30% of people that used the internet. For the rest (kids upto mid 30s), they couldn’t care less. They just wanted to listen to good music – they weren’t interested in owning a shiny bit of plastic, they were happy with putting their music on a heavier white piece of plastic called an iPod.
