When I started doing research for this blog post, I started with Jim Collin's entry about confronting the brutal facts. There were two main messages that I gleaned from the website: 1 - keep faith that in the end you will prevail and 2 - confront the ugly truth about what it will take to get there.
In this lesson, there is a counter idea of which to be aware: Charisma. I think that is an interesting concept. It could be so easy to be seduced by a very charismatic leader who has a lot of their own pet projects.
I started looking for companies that managed a technological turnaround. Companies that were given a challenge and have used this tenant to come out of it. I thought about Apple. However, I think that Steve Jobs is an brilliant ego maniac, but without him, the company fails. Even with him, it pursues pet projects with sometimes horrible results. With its current string of winners, it is hard to remember and see that fact, but it shouldn't blind the overriding principle.
I wanted to say Eastman-Kodak. Once the world of digital photography became so pervasive, it was looking at the loss of a massive portion of its business. Granted, Kodak has bandaged the bleeding by getting into that arena, but it is not the company that it once was.
That idea lead me to use Nikon as the main example of Confronting the Brutal facts. I wouldn't normally consider Nikon, a camera manufacturer, a technology company. However, that has changed in the past few years. The company has realized there is not a future in making manual cameras and made a move to focus on digital. It also evaluated it business decided to eliminate it eye wear division to invest it other parts of the company.
Nikon started moving not only to digital, but to the places that were natural extensions of digital - the social web. Nikon formed a relationship with Flickr to create the Nikon Digital Learning Center.
It also seems like Nikon has hopped on the mobile phone theory of disposable technology. I bought an Coolpix S51 camera last November that was already obsolete in the camera aisle this summer. Consumers want faster shutters, better features and more megapixels.
So what does this mean, look at the market, understand what it is demanding from you, and be honest with yourself and your company about how you can succeed.
Do you know a technology company that managed to do that?
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