We did nothing wrong”: learn from the mistakes of V&D, Kodak & Nokia

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Changes are constantly occurring and companies need to find an answer to them on a daily basis. In order to survive, companies need to invest in 'strategic agility'. Strategic agility ensures that you see changes coming sooner and that you can anticipate and respond to them faster. If we look at a broader picture, there are eight drivers to work on more speed and agility, in order to survive in turbulent times.

8 Reasons for Strategic Agility
Achieving a stronger market and competitive position and a greater chance of survival by responding better and faster to changing circumstances.
Reducing the time-to-market and time-to-operate of new products, services, processes, networks and co-makerships .
Increasing customer focus by developing new customer relationships, communities, service concepts, customer processes and customer interaction channels.
Increasing innovative capacity by involving customers, suppliers and partners in the development of new products and services (co-creation and open innovation).
Realizing a network organization by supporting new platforms, value chains and value networks.
Be able to more quickly adopt new technologies for serving customers and designing, producing and distributing products and services.
Increasing operational efficiency afghanistan telegram number list by optimizing work processes, workflows, chain processes and communication processes.
Changing the way of organizing, leading, collaborating and taking responsibility, referred to as 'social innovation'.
Strategically agile companies excel in 5 areas. In my previous article you can read about 5 building blocks for an agile strategy .

Surviving in turbulent times
Strategic agility helps first of all to survive in turbulent times. In this context it is interesting what the researchers Doz and Kosonen say about this:

When the depth of a crisis shows in the numbers, it's too late for effective strategic action. IBM's highest profits were recorded two years before their collapse, in 1991. Nokia's results were stellar until 2007, shortly before the company's collapse.

Nokia did nothing wrong
Nokia still had a market share of almost 40 percent in 2009. Four years later, it was only 3 percent. Samsung went from around 4 percent to 35 percent market share in the same period, while Apple fluctuated around 15 percent. Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia, had nothing else to say when the smartphone division was sold to Microsoft in 2013:

We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.

Although multiple causes play a role, the common thread in all analyses and reports is that Nokia was not able to make the right decisions at the right time and to implement all necessary changes quickly enough. This also applied to a greater or lesser extent to other mobile providers such as Motorola, Sony Ericsson and RIM's BlackBerry.

Virgin Records a little too persistent
Our own Free Record Shop also fell victim. People didn't know what to do when music broke through via the internet. This also applied to successful entrepreneur Richard Branson who openly admits that he held on to the outdated business model of record and CD shops for far too long with Virgin Records, which also meant that Virgin Records did not survive.

Virgin megastoreThe speed with which the Internet turned the music business upside down was underestimated by many. Edger Bronfman Jr, CEO of record company Warner Music Group (WMG), freely admitted it in 2008: “We used to fool ourselves. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection, and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find, and as a result of course, consumers won.”