Disintermediation and the enemy of the good

December 29th, 2008

Fred Wilson, as ever insightful and straightforward, has a great post on how industries fall apart. It really made me realise that what happened to the music industry is happening to my industry right now.
I watched Napster tear apart the 100 year old music industry without even trying – the execs screamed and flailed and sued and they’re still gone. Most importantly, I remember thinking “Can’t these guys see this is inevitable?”. Shouldn’t I be thinking the same thing about what I do on a day to day basis?
To be fair, my employer is much better than others. There is still a lot of entitlement type thinking – not “We deserve” but more an amazement that anyone thinks anyone else is capable of running a telecoms network. It’s a confused shock that people would buy services from network not run perfectly.
Voltaire said “The perfect is the enemy of the good” and this is the trap Telcos still fall into. It’s not unusual for the same person in one meeting to lament that SIP and VoIP needs to provide perfect quality voice and then note that people are abandoning their fixed voice lines for mobile – as if mobile voice is perfect. The same point was made a number of times by music execs – “MP3s don’t have the quality of CDs!”. Some people cared about this but I think it’s pretty clear almost everyone else just didn’t care.

The new year…

As I sit with a blank sheet of paper and wonder what changes I need to make in the next 12 months, one question stands out – what will happen to my industry and what should I be doing to ensure I don’t end up looking like those forlorn music guys?

Entry Filed under: Business, Personal Development