Ep. 382: Winning the Right Game
Guest: Ron Adner, Dartmouth College
In his book, “Winning the Right Game,” Ron Adner starts by quoting Mark Twain, who said, “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
And what we don’t know these days is what is happening in the business world – the shifts underway by far supersede the impact of COVID.
Adner says the old rules don’t apply any longer so it’s time to shift gears because, as he puts it, “Winning the wrong game means losing.” Take Kodak, for example – a company that foresaw the shift to digital and succeeded in transitioning to digital everything and still failed, not because it was unwilling to adapt and change, but because it changed to the wrong format.
Kodak scored big with digital cameras and digital printing but it completely missed digital viewing, even though the company was lightyears ahead in cloud computing and storage. Adner says, “The Kodak story is compelling because it provides a perfect illustration of where, how, and why classic strategy breaks down in the face of ecosystem disruption.”
Stuart McNish invited Ron Adner to join him for a Conversation that Matters about why ecosystem shifts trump technology, COVID, and classic business strategies.
