数字达尔文主义

‘I wouldn’t start from here’ COPYRIGHT MATERIALNOT FOR REPRODUCTIONThere is a tale about a man who, lost in the deepest country lanes ofrural Ireland, approaches a passer-by herding sheep along the single-track lane. Winding down the window, the man asks for directions toDublin. The local takes a long deep breath and thinks long and hardbefore replying, ‘Well sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here’. It’s not the best joke, but it’s a reasonable metaphor for business today.When faced with the winds of change, many of us are unstable, saddledwith a legacy of what were well-intentioned and reasonable decisionsbut which now, in retrospect, feel unwise. This resulting cumulativeeffect means many businesses are simply not fit to compete with otheryounger companies today. With no clear sign of a path ahead, I wonderhow many businesses wish they could start from somewhere else? Companies, like people, are manifestations of all the decisions evermade. They are the result of years of accumulating people, acquiringbusinesses, inheriting assets, systems, cultures. For many years the paceof change was sufficiently slow that these lumbering beasts could adaptover time. Leaders would construct new units, managers would start newinitiatives, change could be bolted on. Yet three things have happened. The world has changed As a species, human beings are designed to live in a world that islocal and linear; yet the pace of change has increased, change is now global and exponential, yet companies are largely the same. The worldappears to change more drastically and more quickly than ever, and inmany ways that pace of change is accelerating. At the same time, theability of many companies to change and adapt has not speeded up.So many companies are not agile enough to reconfigure, re-engineeror otherwise change as quickly as consumer expectations and the busi-ness environment demand, or as fast as their competitors can. COPYRIGHT MATERIALNOT FOR REPRODUCTIONSecondly, the advantages of size have slowly crumbled. Big compa-nies have forever leveraged huge advantages over smaller companies.They could negotiate vast discounts on costs of goods, they couldleverage their position to gain distribution, they could spend vastsums on advertising, attract the best staff, borrow money wheneverneeded. The internet and changing business dynamics now mean thatslowly many of the benefits of being large are being wiped out. Infact, increasingly, what once made companies powerful, like owner-ship of assets, expertise, large workforces, historical brands, are tosome extent becoming liabilities and make change harder. Thirdly, we’ve seen thrusting insurgent companies built for themodern age change the market. We’ve observed the rise of compa-nies that have ignored all known wisdom. They have built themselveswith the latest technology at their core, they have skirted round orignored prior regulations and bent the rules. They are constructed onnew economic principles and counter-intuitive business models thathave treated legal and societal responsibility as externalities. Thesecompanies often have lower operating costs, scale fast, and haveoften removed value from entire markets. Experience has alwaysbeen seen as a good thing, yet now it is those companies built mostrecently, with the latest technology embedded deeply at the very coreof their business, that seem to offer the best structure for growth inthe future. It’s these three changes – rapid global change, the irrelevance ofsize, and the rise of insurgent companies – above all else that nowmake life different. They mean that companies have to think hard, bebold and challenge themselves. In this chapter I want to introduce themain concepts ofDigital Darwinismbusiness transformation, andthe need to address change in the world. I want to get businessesto start asking the right questions: the hard, existential ones. This chapter is about understanding the context and reason for change,while providing a wider foundation for concepts that I build on inlater chapters. It’s time to ask the hard questions COPYRIGHT MATERIALNOT FOR REPRODUCTIONThe most profound and the very best questions we never dare toask are: what would your business look like if it was created today?What would it do? How would it do it? How would it make money?What would you still have done and what would you never havecreated? These are questions about your company’s very existence,best posed in a holiday home in a foreign land, or staring out of thetrain window, well removed from the realities of day-to-day working. If your answer is that your business would be exactly the same ifset up today, then either you are not thinking hard enough, or you’veset up your company this weekend, or most worryingly, you are igno-rant of many of the changes in the world and what is now possible. The answers will most likely be annoying. You probably feel irri-tated now. You may feel a little judged and misunderstood and don’tli