Learn From Newspapers Before The Internet Makes You Extinct

If you remember a while back I had a rant about not wanting to save newspapers by using taxpayer money to bail them out. My concern was that newspapers knew the Internet was coming and chose not to innovate. My post was published on Business Insider and yesterday the site put out a graph of $8.0B the industry let evaporate as job sites took all their listings.

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Marc Cenedella, CEO of TheLadders.com adds more clarity as to what happened. He says, it was uncomfortable for newspapers to make the leap so they didn’t.

I would add it was a cultural problem – a bunch of academics with an entrenched competitive advantage being thrown into a new business model where they were on a level playing field with the best and brightest entrepreneurs was just too much for them.

We saw the same sort of challenges at DEC the company which owned AltaVista the most Google-like company to totally botch the opportunity to monetize search.

Corporate culture is as much of a killer of corporations as disruption. It just takes the clarity and guts to act on what uncomfortable things need to be done today to keep your company running tomorrow.

And if you think its tough out there today – just wait… As the Internet is permeating everything, every market and opportunity – the hotshot start up around the corner is gunning for your company and if you aren’t careful, innovating and competing vigorously, you’ll be the next victim of the Net.

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