Thinking about Growth Sectors
Roger Cohen wrote an editorial today complaining about the use of preditor drones by the CIA in Pakistan. It is a troubling issue, but another aspect of the article caught my eye. In passing Cohen also wrote
Bill Gates has noted, robotics are now where computers were back in 1980.”
Interesting. A growth industry. So, do we all go out and start trying to build robots so that we can join in the growth? No. But we should start wondering if we can connect to or service this growth industry. If we can do that, our business will grow along with it.
Perhaps that was the lesson behind Cringely’s story about A&P. Poor A&P decided back in the 1960’s that it did not need to connect to a growing industry — shopping malls. Macy’s department store had a similar oops moment around the same time (Drucker told this story). Macy’s dominated the department store market until management decided to turn a cold shoulder to the household appliance department — just as the household appliance market was exploding.
Are these examples of management arrogance? Perhaps. Equally likely, management simply did not put a high enough priority on connecting to growth sectors. Hmmm …. so here is the multi million dollar question. What growth sectors are you connected to?
FOLLOW - In a sense, this post is a follow up from the discussion at Domus last night about building innovation “ecosystems”. I will be posting more on problems of “isolation”, “following”, and “leading” to see if I develop a better vocabulary about the value added in connecting.
2d FOLLOW - Tim Sanders writes how cloud computing is a “mega trend” in this post from his blog “Sanders Says”. We might call it another growth sector.
3rd FOLLOW - If you are interested in robotics. check out this link (supplied from Boing Boing) about robotic pacman systems.