Is your company losing its edge?

In a fast-changing and competitive environment, businesses – and the workforce – need to be on top of their game to remain relevant.

- ​​​​​​​Amanda Visser

Companies sometimes have to “scoop” themselves to survive. Kodak decided to hold back its scoop. It was the first company to develop a digital camera. Instead of marketing it, it held back to save its film business.

We all know how that ended.

But you have to have the right vision when you want to reinvent your business.

With the onset of online news websites, newspaper editors kept the scoops for the newspaper – the next day. They inevitably got scooped by their competitors. Many newspapers are still struggling to find the right business model to continue making money from their news.

Many more companies are struggling to predict and assess the rate of change happening around them and how to recognise the signs that they are falling behind.

One may have an existing business model that still has some life in it, but maybe for only another decade or so.

“The reality is to have the courage to see things for what they are, and not for the way you want them to be,” says Gidon Novick, founder of Lucid Ventures, and co-founder of Colectiv.

Today’s business owners need courage, commitment and resilience to drive change and innovation. It is human nature to avoid things that are new because the outcome is uncertain and scary or threatens to disrupt your current model. People tend to clutch onto things that are predictable and clear.

“That is where the rubber hits the road in terms of organisations that are willing and able to adapt and change, compared to organisations that stay stuck in their current model or mindset,” says Novick.