Friday, May 25, 2018

Follow the Leader

This article is the ideal way to start a morning.  It is about three mainstay retail monoliths forced to follow the lead of a disrupt-er.  

The three retail giants are Walmart, Target, and Kroger. The disrupt-er is (you guessed it) Amazon. 

The disrupt-er is forcing monumental change in all three companies. The three are buying other companies to catch up with the disrupt-er and they are forced to alter the compensation structure.  Finally, all three are trying to find avenues to be the leader as opposed to the follower.  

Customer focus is the foundation of disruptive technology.  What I find fascinating is Amazon's consistent effort to be the disrupt-er. Even though the company celebrates its 24th anniversary this year and is among the largest firms in the US, it continues with its entrepreneurial attitude and intense customer focus.

I am reminded of the Andy Grove book, Only the Paranoid Survive.  In it he says, “Businesses fail either because they leave their customers or because their customer leave them !” 

This will be a fascinating story over the next few years and certainly worthy of a a book. For now, this is the article.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/finance-companies/walmart-and-target-are-spending-like-crazy-to-challenge-amazon/ar-AAxN9pI

No comments:

Post a Comment