FT.com
August 20, 2013 5:52 pm
John KayBy John Kay
Failed businesses are seen as victims of errors rather than
as having simply run their course
The Financial Times has carried an unusual number of
obituaries and stories of terminal illness this summer.
There was the bankruptcy of Detroit and the slide into
administration of once-ubiquitous companies, such as Jessops, the high-street
camera retailer. Then there was last week’s announcement of the continuing
troubles of BlackBerry, which made the defining business product of the first
decade of the 21st century.
Humans have always found it hard to cope with the idea that
every individual has a lifespan even as life itself goes on. The idea of a
natural life cycle for a business, or industrial centre, is even more difficult
to accept. So we ask: what can be done to revive Detroit? Can BlackBerry find a
new role?
Commentators argue that Jessops had not simply come to the
end of its natural life; rather, it was the victim of errors, failing to
respond appropriately to the rise of online retailing.
The marketing guru Theodore Levitt elaborated this theme in
an article half a century ago. Levitt denounced marketing myopia. There was
always, he suggested, a future for a company; the key was to look for a
creative answer to the question: “What business are we in?” Manufacturers of
buggy whips might still be around as carmakers if they had only understood that
they were not simply encouraging faster horses; they were transport companies.
Much of Levitt’s analysis was devoted to urging oil
companies to recognise that they were really in the energy business. Some of
these companies found his arguments persuasive.
Yet 50 years later, few of their diversifications into other
forms of power have worked out – their flirtation with coal in the 1970s and
1980s was particularly unsuccessful – and the traditional oil majors still make
most of their money out of oil.
Levitt did not recognise that competitive advantage, rather
than a fertile imagination, is the key to success. The whip manufacturers had
neither production capabilities nor marketing channels relevant to the
automobile industry. The skillset needed to manage coal mines is very different
from that required to run an integrated oil company.
Recent history has provided a textbook illustration of the
limitations of the Levitt hypothesis – the disastrous remodelling of JC
Penney’s dowdy stores by Ron Johnson, brilliant designer of Apple’s retail
chain. The outlets of both JC Penney and Apple are shops but the age group and
disposable incomes of their customers – and their reasons for visiting the
stores – were entirely different: JC Penney and Apple were not really in the
same business.
The factors that attracted motor vehicle producers to
Detroit a century ago – excellent access to resources and transport links,
followed by local skills and specialist suppliers – are no longer competitive
advantages in car making nor, indeed, in other industries.
Some urban regenerations succeed. Former dockland areas
enjoy waterfront positions that make them attractive locations for apartments
and bars. Many cities have redeveloped old markets in exciting ways. But more
often, the factors that facilitated old industrial developments are unappealing
in a modern age.
The quayside development or the revitalised market hall work
because the old source of competitive advantage has a new field of application.
The same is true of the most striking recent case of a company that
successfully found a second life. IBM was able to reinvent itself as a business
services company when its mainframe business declined because its real strength
had always been less in its technology than in the quality of support it
provided for customers.
But such revivals are rare. At The Washington Post, Jeff
Bezos inherits the paper’s irreproducible competitive advantage of reputation
and readership – the “moat” that Warren Buffett shrewdly identified in 1975.
His challenge is to apply that advantage in a market undergoing radical change.
As Jessops shows, a business in decline can fall into a
downward spiral: what would attract young professionals to Detroit, or able
technologists to BlackBerry? The problem is not solved by fostering illusions
about reinvention.
Merger is often a civilised alternative to bankruptcy, and
we live on mainly through our progeny.
johnkay@johnkay.com
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