I’m reading Dealing with Darwin; How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of their Evolution by Geoffrey Moore. It’s an excellent book. I’m finding myself going back over sections and pondering the relevance with the newsagency channel.
My biggest take away so far is that incremental innovation is not enough. Incremental innovation is what our industry has prided itself in. You know, the nice protect the status quo kind of innovation. Genuine innovation requires that us to be bold or get out of the game. We need breakaway products and or services with a compelling value proposition.
Innovation needs to come from us. It needs to focus on transferring resources from declining areas of our businesses to areas of growth. This is exactly what newspaper publishers are doing right now.
The challenge for newsagents is for them (us) to understand that we are the barrier to innovation – our commitment to traditions of the channel, our rejection of change, and, our belief that our suppliers must be the drivers of change through our channel.
There are innovators in the newsagency channel but not enough to impact the entire channel. This is where the ˜Darwin” in the title plays – survival of the fittest.
Newsagents – read the book. It’s excellent!