What potential threats to your business have you identified to be mindful of in this coming year?

Remember when you used to enjoy going to your locally owned movie rental store? Then this chain arrived called Block Buster creating a more awesome experience with more titles and your locally owned store closed. Then this company named NetFlix made it so much more convenient and didn’t charge late fees. Then this company called Red Box placed these DVD vending machines in over 19,000 convenient locations and they don’t charge late fees either and you don’t even have to take it back to the same vending machine. And the latest thing is that you can stream movies down over the Internet and watch them over your mobile device or PC.

Now Amazon has come out with the Kindle, Sony and even Barnes & Noble are trying to answer the competitive call. If you believe Seth Godin’s blog today, its over for the average book store. (It’s not the rats you need to worry about http://bit.ly/5UlsaZ)

I believe Seth is correct. I personally have around 20 new books that I have yet to read. I’ll buy one of the electronic readers when I complete these. This is a decision by a digital immigrant who still has several of his collegiate text books and goes back and looks at the notes he wrote in the margins.

You may find it better to be the innovator of game changing trends than to just be able to quickly identify them. However, at a minimum you do need to be able to identify them. Have you given thought to possible innovations that could change your industry?

by: Terry L. Massey

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