The search for survival: Lessons from disruptive technologies

In recent decades, technology has changed rapidly to the point that it can very quickly affect a seemingly impregnable company or industry. Unexpected technological developments enable innovators to offer new products and services that threaten incumbents. In order to survive, existing firms must be able to see a disruption on the horizon and figure out how to respond. The Search for Survival: Lessons from Disruptive Technologies examines organizations that failed to develop a strategy for coping with a technological disruption and have suffered greatly or even gone out of business. The first chapter presents a model of how firms can respond to and hopefully survive a disruptive technology. Each following chapter focuses on firms that have failed to survive or whose future is in doubt, accompanied by an extensive, detailed discussion of the lessons learned from each company or field's failings, covering examples from industries such as recorded music, book publishing, video, newspaper, and higher education

Preface -- Acknowledgments -- On the nature of survival -- Kodak misses its moment -- The New York Stock Exchange : protecting a way of life -- Blockbuster vs. Netflix : digital trumps physical -- Video content : who creates it, who owns it and who distributes it? -- Newspapers : all the news that's fit to browse -- Books : hardcover, paperback or no-cover? -- The recorded music industry fights the future -- Education, the industry -- Temptation : technology facilitates risky business -- The dictator business : the threat from social networks -- Moving things : winners and losers -- Survivor tales -- Danger ahead -- Strategies for survival -- Appendix -- Index