"they (the carriage makers) ended up going out of business, because they too narrowly defined their markets as being the horse-drawn carriage market"
Or because they were no better qualified to make and sell automobiles than any other large random group of people, had to pay a lot of employees while they were figuring out what to do next, and weren't willing to bet their company on something with maybe a 10% chance of success. Meanwhile, auto startups were being formed by a few guys in a garage, and the ones that were good enough to build and sell a few cars got bigger while the other ones failed.
I've seen markets drop out under several tech companies - for instance, when Microsoft bundles something into Windows and kills the 3rd-party market - and it's not pretty. If there's a way out, it's probably by focusing on what the company *is good at*, rather than some vague marketing idea of what line of business they're in. For instance, AT&T credit cards - at one point they realized that one of the things they were really good at was collecting money from people.
So the RIAA and MPAA really are in a fight for their lives - any radical change in music or movie creation and distribution will result in a market that they're unlikely to survive in, because they haven't needed and don't have the competencies they'll need to compete in that market.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Peter Desnoyers.
A tangent about carriage makers and lines of business
Or because they were no better qualified to make and sell automobiles than any other large random group of people, had to pay a lot of employees while they were figuring out what to do next, and weren't willing to bet their company on something with maybe a 10% chance of success. Meanwhile, auto startups were being formed by a few guys in a garage, and the ones that were good enough to build and sell a few cars got bigger while the other ones failed.
I've seen markets drop out under several tech companies - for instance, when Microsoft bundles something into Windows and kills the 3rd-party market - and it's not pretty. If there's a way out, it's probably by focusing on what the company *is good at*, rather than some vague marketing idea of what line of business they're in. For instance, AT&T credit cards - at one point they realized that one of the things they were really good at was collecting money from people.
So the RIAA and MPAA really are in a fight for their lives - any radical change in music or movie creation and distribution will result in a market that they're unlikely to survive in, because they haven't needed and don't have the competencies they'll need to compete in that market.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Peter Desnoyers.
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