by Rita McGrath
conventional bureaucracy: Stephen Denning, The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done (New York: AMACOM, 2018).
“They just build”: Chris Zook and James Allen, “Reigniting Growth,” Harvard Business Review, March 2016.
most critical lesson for a while: Motley Fool Staff, “Home Depot Is Doing Everything Right,” The Motley Fool, May 23, 2017, https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/23/home-depot-is-doing-everything-right.aspx.
his book Little Bets: Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, repr. ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).
new ideas to the surface: Mark Wilson, “Adobe’s Kickbox: The Kit to Launch Your Next Big Idea,” Fast Company, February 9, 2015, https://www.fastcompany.com/3042128/adobes-kickbox-the-kit-to-launch-your-next-big-idea.
give it a try: “Discover Kickbox,” Adobe, n.d., https://kickbox.adobe.com/what-is-kickbox.
by an executive: Noam Scheiber, “Steady Shifts for Workers Help Stores, Too,” New York Times, March 28, 2018.
immensely liberating: John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle, Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters (San Francisco: Instigator Press, 2016).
did not want to listen: Reza Moaiandin, “How Facebook Ignored Security Warnings for 3 Years,” CPO Magazine, April 20, 2018, https://www.cpomagazine.com/2018/04/20/how-facebook-ignored-security-warnings-for-3-years.
“gave their consent”: Claudia Geib, “Here’s Why That Recent Abuse of Facebook Data Matters,” Futurism, March 20, 2018, https://futurism.com/abuse-facebook-data-cambridge/.
“blog posts and research”: Shahani, “Mark Zuckerberg’s Big Blind Spot.”
illegal behavior: Dan Ackman, “Pay Madness at Enron,” Forbes, March 22, 2002, https://www.forbes.com/2002/03/22/0322enronpay.html#3cec42dd7a6d.
US Supreme Court: Bill Chapell, “Aereo’s TV Streaming Service Is Illegal, Supreme Court Says,” The Two-Way (blog), NPR, June 24, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/06/25/325488386/tech-firm-aereo-performs-an-illegal-service-supreme-court-says.
Securities and Exchange Commission report: Jeff John Roberts, “Facebook Has Been Hit by Dozens of Data Lawsuits. And This Could Be Just the Beginning,” Fortune, April 30, 2018, http://fortune.com/2018/04/30/facebook-data-lawsuits/.
2016 presidential election: Zeynep Tufekci, “Mark Zuckerberg Is in Denial,” New York Times, November 15, 2016.
stories on the platform: Karen Zraick, “Mark Zuckerberg Seeks to Clarify Remarks About Holocaust Deniers After Outcry,” New York Times, July 18, 2018.
voters in the midterm elections: John Markoff, “Social Networks Can Affect Voter Turnout, Study Says.” New York Times, September 13, 2012.
“Patriarch Partners in 2007”: Dave Carpenter, “Rand McNally Adapts to New Age with Software, Gadgets,” Houston Chronicle, October 18, 2006, https://www.chron.com/business/technology/article/Rand-McNally-adapts-to-new-age-with-software-1511674.php.
representatives of the future: See Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson, Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future (Cambridge: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).
tie the messaging together: “Hi, We’re . . . Nice to Meet You,” Mailchimp, n.d., https://mailchimp.com/did-you-mean/.
2. Early Warnings
“than will actually happen”: Patrick Marren, email communication with author, February 28, 2019.
“Uh, sure”: Clifford Stoll, “Why the Web Won’t Be Nirvana,” Newsweek, February 26, 1995, http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306.
“at least 20 years”: Claire Cockburn and T. D. Wilson, “Business Use of the World-Wide Web,” Information Research 1, no. 2 (1995), http://www.informationr.net/ir/1-2/paper6.html.
“lulled into inaction”: Bill Gates, with Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson, The Road Ahead (New York: Viking, 1995).
“OS share is 1%”: Stephen G. Blank, “Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple,” blog post, October 24, 2016, https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer-and-why-he-still-has-his-job-at-apple/.
“catch these signals”: Sanjay Purohit, interview with author, December 14, 2018.
employee satisfaction and engagement: See, for example, Mark Heymann, “Spotlight on Service: Integrating Workforce Management with Employee Engagement to Optimize Customer Satisfaction and Profitability,” Global Business and Organizational Excellence 34, no. 5 (2015): 6–12; Lisa Cain, Sarah Tanford, and Lenna Shulga, “Customers’ Perceptions of Employee Engagement: Fortifying the Service-Profit Chain,” International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration 19, no. 1 (2018): 52–77; Ieva Martinaityte, Claudia Sacramento, and Samuel Aryee, “Delighting the Customer: Creativity-Oriented High-Performance Work Systems, Frontline Employee Creative Performance, and Customer Satisfaction,” Journal of Management 45, no. 2 (2019): 728–51; and Dharmendra Mehta and Naveen K. Mehta, “Employee Engagement: A Literature Review,” Economia: Seria Management 16, no. 2 (2013): 208–15.
more recently reconfirmed: Amy Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (1999): 350–83; Peter Cauwelier, “Building High-Performance Teams Through Action Learning,” Action Learning: Research and Practice 16, no. 1 (2019): 68–76.
“Customer love”: Matt Weinberger, “Satya Nadella: ‘Customer Love’ Is a Better Sign of Success Than Revenue or Profit,” Business Insider, October 7, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-culture-2015-10.
“put food into boxes”: Sam Harnett, “How Delivery Apps Are Changing the Restaurant Industry,” Marketplace, November 19, 2018, https://www.marketplace.org/2018/11/19/business/how-delivery-apps-are-changing-restaurant-industry.
envision the future: P. Schoemaker and C. A. J. M. van der Heijden, “Integrating Scenarios into Strategic Planning at Royal Dutch/Shell,” Planning Review, May/June, 1992.
three future scenarios: Andrew S. Grove, “Surviving a 10X Force,” Strategy & Leadership 25, no. 1 (1997): 35–37.
existing model for education: Derek Alexander Muller, “This Will Revolutionize Education,” YouTube, December 1, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c.
mover on the World Wide Web: Paula J. Hane, “Fathom This: Academic and Cultural Institutions Partner to Create Interactive Knowledge Company,” Information Today, April 10, 2000, http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleID=17822.
at all unusual: Karen Hua, “Education as Entertainment: YouTube Sensations Teaching the Future,” Forbes, June 23, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenhua/2015/06/23/education-as-entertainment-youtube-sensations-teaching-the-future/#73ea596247c2.
four-year degree: “37 Percent of May 2016 Employment in Occupations Typically Requiring Postsecondary Education,” US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 28, 2017, https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/37-percent-of-may-2016-employment-in-occupations-typically-requiring-postsecondary-education.htm?view_full.
“risk of degree inflation”: Joseph B. Fuller and Manjari Raman, “Dismissed by Degrees: How Degree Inflation Is Undermining U.S. Competitiveness and Hurting America’s Middle Class” (report, Accenture, Grads of Life, and Harvard Business School, October 2017), https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/dismissed-by-degrees.pdf.
within four years: Jeffrey J. Selingo, “Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required,” New York Times, January 30, 2017.
overall consumer price index: Timothy McMahon, “College Tuition and Fees vs Overall Inflation,” InflationData.com, June 14, 2012, https://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/college-tuition-fees-inflation/.
owed a decade earlier: Anthony Cilluffo, “5 Facts About Student Loans,” Pew Research Center, August 24, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/24/5-facts-about-student-loans/.
“a dead end”: Selingo, “Wanted
: Factory Workers.”
alternative certification systems: Dan Schawbel, “10 Workplace Trends You’ll See in 2018,” Forbes, November 1, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2017/11/01/10-workplace-trends-youll-see-in-2018/#68a0ecc4bf22.
ongoing skepticism: Cathy Sandeen, “The Emerging World of Alternative Credentials,” Higher Education Today (blog), American Council on Education, October 1, 2013, https://www.higheredtoday.org/2013/10/01/the-emerging-world-of-alternative-credentials/.
traditional credentials are “boring”: Mordy Golding, “What’s Next in L&D: Experts Reveal Predictions for 2017,” The Learning Blog, LinkedIn, January 19, 2017, https://learning.linkedin.com/blog/learning-thought-leadership/what_s-next-in-l-d--experts-reveal-predictions-for-2017.
for their workers: Ainsley Harris, “Say Hello to the University of Microsoft,” Fast Company, June 17, 2015, https://www.fastcompany.com/3046941/say-hello-to-the-university-of-microsoft.
large research universities: John Holusha, “Steel Mini-Mills Could Bring Boon or Blood Bath,” New York Times, May 30, 1995.
the book Disrupting Class: Clayton Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis Johnson, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, exp. ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2016).
“intellectual values”: Michael M. Harmon, “Business Research and Chinese Patriotic Poetry: How Competition for Status Distorts the Priority Between Research and Teaching in U.S. Business Schools,” Academy of Management Learning & Education 5, no. 2 (2006): 234–43.
obsolete lessons to their students: Stephen Denning, “Why Business Schools Teach Yesterday’s Expertise,” Forbes, May 27, 2018.
an increasing rate: Scott Jaschik, “When Colleges Rely on Adjuncts, Where Does the Money Go?,” Inside Higher Ed, January 5, 2017, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/05/study-looks-impact-adjunct-hiring-college-spending-patterns.
“Impossible”: Jillian D’Onfro, “Jeff Bezos’ Brilliant Advice for Anyone Running a Business,” Business Insider, January 31, 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-brilliant-advice-for-anyone-running-a-business-2015-1.
3. On the Lookout for Weak Signals: Defining Your Arena
“no longer true”: Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever, and Seth Verry, “When Growth Stalls,” Harvard Business Review, March 2008.
potential bad news: Rita Gunther McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).
“for the market”: Michael E. Porter, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (New York: Free Press, 1985).
“Design for Action”: Tim Brown and Roger L. Martin, “Design for Action,” Harvard Business Review, September 2015.
hair removal and its importance decline: Kaitlyn Tiffany, “The Absurd Quest to Make the ‘Best’ Razor,” Vox, December 11, 2018, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/11/18134456/best-razor-gillette-harrys-dollar-shave-club.
digital devices “addictive”: Adam Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (New York, Penguin Press, 2017).
“periods of profitable performance”: Alexei Agratchev, “New Metrics for a New Retail Industry,” The Robin Report, May 2, 2016, https://www.therobinreport.com/new-metrics-for-a-new-retail-industry.
social websites and the Internet: “The Teens Market in the U.S.,” Packaged Facts, June 1, 2007, https://www.packagedfacts.com/Teens-1493744/.
approval on a purchase: Ylan Q. Mui, “As the Kids Go Buy,” Washington Post, June 4, 2007.
a major inflection had arrived: Ryan Knutson and Theo Francis, “Basic Costs Squeeze Families,” Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2014.
“‘stay connected,’ she said”: Elizabeth A. Harris and Rachel Abrams, “More Plugged-In Than Preppy,” New York Times, August 28, 2014.
“online since last October”: Vanessa Friedman, “Stepping Off the Runway,” New York Times, February 11, 2016.
conventional apparel industry: Walter Loeb, “Zara Leads in Fast Fashion,” Forbes, March 30, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2015/03/30/zara-leads-in-fast-fashion/#6b316b759447.
total US growth in 2016: Lauren Thomas, “Amazon’s Shoe Business Sees Double-Digit Growth, and the Year Is Only Halfway Over,” CNBC, August 3, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/03/amazons-shoe-business-sees-double-digit-growth-and-the-year-is-only-halfway-over.html.
“mostly in offshore wind”: Nerijus Adomaitis, “Statoil to Become Equinor, Dropping ‘Oil’ to Attract Young Talent,” Reuters, May 15, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-statoil-agm-equinor/statoil-to-become-equinor-dropping-oil-to-attract-young-talent-idUSKCN1IG0MN.
4. Customers, Not Hostages
“hardly blame them”: Stu Woo, “Under Fire, Netflix Rewinds DVD Plan,” Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2011.
would consume content: Ashley Rodriguez, “Netflix Was Founded 20 Years Ago Today Because Reed Hastings Was Late Returning a Video,” Quartz, August 29, 2017, https://qz.com/1062888/netflix-was-founded-20-years-ago-today-because-reed-hastings-was-late-a-returning-video/.
“at the right time”: Charlie Gaudet, “6 Strategies Netflix Can Teach Us for Dominating Our Market,” Predictable Profits, n.d., https://predictableprofits.com/6-strategies-netflix-can-teach-us-dominating-market/.
one of Sony’s early models: Ashlee Kieler, “On This Day in 1984, the Supreme Court Saved the VCR from Certain Death,” Consumerist, January 17, 2014, https://consumerist.com/2014/01/17/on-this-day-in-1984-the-supreme-court-saved-the-vcr-from-certain-death/.
“time it would take”: E. Scott Mayfield, “Netflix (2000)” (case study, Harvard Business School, September 2000; revised January 2016).
“use by other firms”: Rumble Press, “If Only Blockbuster Had Listened to Enron . . . : How Blockbuster Blew a Chance to Dominate Video-on-Demand,” Medium, n.d., https://medium.com/@rumblepress/if-only-blockbuster-had-listened-to-enron-4166752a78de.
decide to take action: Jason Del Ray, “This Is the Jeff Bezos Playbook for Preventing Amazon’s Demise,” Recode, April 12, 2017, https://www.recode.net/2017/4/12/15274220/jeff-bezos-amazon-shareholders-letter-day-2-disagree-and-commit.
more than $6 billion: “Blockbuster: Its Failure and Lessons to Digital Transformers,” submission, Digital Initiative, Harvard Business School, February 2, 2017, https://digit.hbs.org/submission/blockbuster-its-failure-and-lessons-to-digital-transformers/.
16 percent of its revenue: Michael Liedtke and Mae Anderson, “Blockbuster Tries to Rewrite Script in Bankruptcy,” Boston.com, September 23, 2010, http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2010/09/23/blockbuster_tries_to_rewrite_script_in_bankruptcy/.
“tolerable” attribute: Ian MacMillan and Rita Gunther McGrath, “Discover Your Products’ Hidden Potential,” Harvard Business Review, June 1996.
“simply can’t match”: W. Sean Owen, “Why Netflix Can’t Match Blockbuster’s Competitive Advantage,” Seeking Alpha, March 27, 2007, https://seekingalpha.com/article/30771-why-netflix-cant-match-blockbusters-competitive-advantage.
easing Antioco out: John Antioco, “Blockbuster’s Former CEO on Sparring with an Activist Shareholder,” Harvard Business Review, April 2011.
went bankrupt in 2010: Greg Satell, “A Look Back at Why Blockbuster Really Failed and Why It Didn’t Have To,” Forbes, September 5, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/09/05/a-look-back-at-why-blockbuster-really-failed-and-why-it-didnt-have-to/#6f0d31ac1d64b.
“take the first step”: “Netflix Offers Subscribers the Option of Instantly Watching Movies on Their PCs,” Netflix, press release, January 16, 2007, https://media.netflix.com/en/press-releases/netflix-offers-subscribers-the-option-of-instantly-watching-movies-on-their-pcs-migration-1.
“subscribes to Netflix”: Ryan Lawler, “Netflix: The Future Is Streaming,” Gigaom, May 27, 2010, https://gigaom.com/2010/05/27/netflix-the-future-is-streaming/.
began to appear: Rex Crum, “Netflix Facing a Fight Against Obsolescence,” MarketWatch, October 25, 2011, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-facing-a-fight-against-obsolescence-2011-10-25.
defected from the service: Nick Wingfield and Brian Stelter, “How Netflix Lost 800,000 Members, and Good Will,” New York Times, October 24, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/technology/netflix-lost-800000-members-with-price-rise-and-split-plan.html.
for “defensive” reasons: Rebecca Greenfield, “Netflix Snaps Up DVD.com Domain,” Atlantic, March 30, 2012.
creation of original content: Rani Molla, “Netflix Now Has Nearly 118 Million Streaming Subscribers Globally,” Recode, January 22, 2018, https://www.recode.net/2018/1/22/16920150/netflix-q4-2017-earnings-subscribers.
“will cut the cord”: Gerry Smith, “Who Killed the Great American Cable Bundle?,” Bloomberg, August 8, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-08/who-killed-the-great-american-cable-tv-bundle.
subscribe to the streaming service: Sarah Perez, “Netflix Reaches 75% of US Streaming Service Viewers, but YouTube Is Catching Up,” TechCrunch, April 10, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/10/netflix-reaches-75-of-u-s-streaming-service-viewers-but-youtube-is-catching-up/.
“multitude of other options”: Alex Sherman, “Reed Hastings Won by Studying Amazon—Then Running in the Opposite Direction,” CNBC, June 16, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/netflix-reed-hastings-inspiration-amazon.html.
they already had: Wingfield and Stelter, “How Netflix Lost 800,000 Members.”
“if we can keep improving”: Matthew Ball, “Netflix Isn’t Being Reckless, It’s Just Playing a Game No One Else Dares (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 3),” Redef, July 8, 2018, https://redef.com/original/5b400a2779328f4711d5675e?curator=MediaREDEFb.
overwhelmingly via cell phone: Kis Leswing, “Two Photos of Tiger Woods Taken 16 Years Apart Show How Much Smartphones Have Changed the World,” Business Insider, August 11, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/tiger-woods-photos-show-how-smartphones-changed-the-world-2018-8.