After the big heavyweight bout (Fury vs. Usyk), I was reminded of another epic battle that plays out in companies all the time.
Value vs. Product.
An understandable but HUGE mistake that companies make, is to let product win.
They forget WHY customers buy their products.
Well, customers buy because of the value the products provide them.
If someone comes along and offers a more compelling reason to supply the same value, at the very least, by switching to its products, then the castle built on product sand begins to crumble.
Of course we know this. But how does a company protect itself from letting this happen?
By having a strategy based on value.
Let’s take at quick look at Kodak, because it’s a well known story.
Kodak didn’t make the switch to digital photography, not in time anyway.
No doubt it had tons of intellectual property protection for what it manufactured. That may have safeguarded it against wannabe providers of camera film and analog cameras and whatnot, but didn’t do much for it when digital technology arrived to do what Kodak did, only making it much more accessible, AND in boatloads of terabytes, that can move around the world effortlessly.
What value did Kodak supply?
It made it easy to capture instances, to catch memories.
Or easier, rather. Easier than the alternatives that came before, that is.
Kodak had a well-known tagline: “You press the button, we do the rest.”
But it didn’t really do the rest, did it? Besides you yourself having to get your photos developed, it did nothing for you when it came to sharing them. That was also on you. You sent pictures in the mail. You had to wait for visitors to come around to your house so you could open up your photo albums.
But sharing is probably the biggest reason why we take pictures.
If Kodak had understood and prioritized the value of sharing, it would have seen the magic of digital photography, when, ironically, it invented the first digital camera in 1975. It would not have discarded it. It would have invested more in it.
By doing so, it would have pushed itself towards open market space. Or positioned itself to be there when that space became accessible.
The would have been a proper strategy for Kodak. To challenge the norms of its market, that said its role ceased with the click of the button.
(Remember, in the beginning Netflix delivered DVDs to you. When streaming arrived, it was ready to greet it.)
But Kodak killed its innovation in digital photography because it couldn’t get past the eye-candy of its existing products.
It is not crazy to imagine Kodak supplying the cameras in your smartphone today, had it been wiser to the things its customers truly valued.
So don’t be Kodak. Don’t get hung out to dry.