Change sweeps away ten "solid" business types

As the pace of change--and especially change of the technological variety--increases, there are inevitable winners and losers.  We have to stay informed, adapt, and be ready to accept the inevitable.  That is especially true if we are to be successful in business. 

I have blogged at length here about how I am afraid my beloved medium of over-the-air radio is much too slow to adapt and expect to continue to remain viable.  Thus I am mildly surprised that radio broadcasting did not make the list of top ten industries on life support recently featured in an article in THE STREET.

I was not surprised at any of the ones that did:

• Wired communications carriers
• Record stores
• Photo-finishing
• Video post-production
• Newspapers
• Stores that rent DVDs and video games.
• Stores that rent formal wear and costumes (no technological aspect here...China and other countries are simply making clothing so cheaply that you can buy a tux as cheaply as you can rent one)
• Textile mills...no need to mill cotton when synthetic fabrics can be produced cheaper and better
• Apparel manufacturing...same reasons as the previous two bullets
• Manufactured housing...again not necessarily a technological victim, just another one of the industries that have been hardest hit by the recession.  This seems to me to be one that could innovate and come out of the recession when pent-up housing demand is unleashed, though.

I know it sounds Darwinian, but industry has to innovate or die.  Technological change may be quick and getting quicker, but it is still possible to see it coming and feint and parry.  But it takes insight and a willingness to listen and innovate.

Find out what the customer wants.  Give it to him.  Tell him you are giving it to him.

There it is: a degree in marketing in three sentences.

Don Keith N4KC
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