How Industry Change

Anita M. McGahan
Introduction
A firms strategy cannot succeed unless its
aligned with the industrys change
trajectory

Classidfied by threats on:

Core activities
The activities that have historically generated profit for
the industry
Example: Face-to-face meeting vs Online meeting
Core assets
The resources, knowledge, and brand capital that have
historically made the organization unique
Example: Patent expiry
Radical Change (Disruptive Change)
Industrys core assets and activities are threatened with obsolescence

Knowledge and brand capital erode

Customer and supplier relationship erode

Following the mass introduction of the new technology

Less risky
a staggered startegy: incremental improvent and experimenting to
develop new market

Risky:
abandon their position and move to emerging line of business
Reinvesting in an establish industry
Progressive Change
Industrys core assets and activities are not
threatened with obsolescence
Basic assets, activities, and underlying technology
remained stable
Progress occures, and technology can have an
enormous impact, but it happens in the existing
frame of business
Profitable strategies carving out distinct positions
based on geographic, technical, or marketing
expertise to build resouce and capabilities
incrementally and steadily
Performance depends on speedy responses to
feedback
Creative Change
Core assets are under threat but core activities are
stable
Companies must continually restore their assets
while maintaining the customer and supplier
relationship
Companies tend to spread the risk of new project
development over a portfolio of initiatives

Despite Marlon Brandos box-office successes during

the 1950s, film studios were reluctant to work with him
because of his personal idiosyncrasies. The stakes in
developing new films are simply too great for producers
to take many risks.
Intermediating Change
Core activities are threatened with obsolescence but core
assets are able to retain their capacity to create value.

Customers and supplier relationships are stretched and

fragile

Challenge: to find ways to preserve knowledge, brand

capital, and other valuable assets while fundamentally
changing relationships with customers and suppliers

Find unconventional wayto extract value from their core

resources
Diversifying into a new business or new industry
Sell off assets or services to former competitors
Four Trajectories of Change
Trajectory Identification
1. Define the industry.
Identifying the companies in your industry that share
common buyers and suppliers.
Direct Competitor:
If a 5% price fluctuation by one company causes customers
or suppliers to switch to another company
When a group of companies intend to appeal to the same
buyers and rely on the same suppliers.
Companies use similar technologies to create value

2. Define industrys core assets and activities.

Core If it were eradicated today, profits would be
lower a year from now, despite efforts to work around
whats missing
Trajectory Identification
3. Determine whether core assets and activities
are threatened with obsolescence.
the threat must make core assets and activities
potentially irrelevant to profitability jeopardize
the survival of at least one industry leader and
widespread enough to influence every company
in the industry.

4. Evaluate the phase of the evolutionary

trajectory
Industry change generally takes place over a
long period, and the options for dealing with
change typically drop off sharply through each
phase.
 The Traditional
model

Progressive and
Creative change.

The Alternate
model

radical or
intermediating
trajectories
Capitalizing on Industry Evolution
Analyzing radical and intermediating change
Balancing act pursuit near term profit while
avoiding investment
New ways of dealing with competitive threats
Interpret internal conflict in a new way

Surviving radical and creative change

Evaluate the speed of core assets depreciation
Manage the buyers and suppliers who have high
risk
Capitalizing on Industry Evolution
Managing progressive change
The accumulative impact of incremental changes can
raise the standard of doing business
Key success develop a system of interrelated
activities that are defensible because of their
compounding effects on profit

Adapting to the stages of change

Different stages require different assets and activities

Diversifying your business

Into multiple progressive industries
Challenge Core assets and core activities sharing
across divisions in multiple trajectories