Taking charge in a new electric world

As I said last week, a big strategic challenge for any business is recognising shifts in the external environment which may represent threats or opportunities to existing sources of income.

One clearly declining ‘product’ in the face of technological change (i.e. the rise of mobile phones) has been the public phonebox.

It’s very cool to see a telecoms company thiking laterally about this costly legacy infrastructure. Telekom Austria has started converting some of their phoneboxes into recharge stations for electric vehicles.

How clever to tap into a hot trend early. Phoneboxes are likely to be in high-traffic areas, are hard for NIMBY residents to object to (given they boxes are already in situ), and may well have some of the power infrastructure (they are lit at least).

While I have little-to-no faith in Aussie equivalent Telstra being so proactive, this does strike me as an example Better Place should be looking at.

What other public infrastructure could be adapted to better/greener use?

h/t: Springwise

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Pregnant with new ideas

A big strategic challenge for any business is recognising shifts in the external environment which may represent threats or opportunities to existing sources of income.

I noticed a splendid example of responding to demographic change at my local gym this week.

In Melbourne’s inner suburbs there has been a mini baby-boom over the last couple of years. Coupled with the increased cost of housing pushing out the student/early 20s population, businesses such as gyms faced a slightly different mix of potential customers.

Female patrons have been the target of yoga and other Les Mills classes for a few years now. But these don’t specifically cater to the growing expectant mums market.

So, the strategic innovation is to run ‘Preggi Bellies‘ classes. It certainly turned heads to see twenty or more heavily pregnant women milling around before their class. Some of them were regular gym patrons. Others, I suspect, are new customers, who may well hang around for the post-natal ‘Back to Body‘ classes. Rather than lose business from pregnancy, the gym may well be boosting its revenue.

A bit of research reveals both courses are franchised product available to all gyms. Nevertheless, it is still an example of a firm responding proactively and ensuring a threat (of declining patronage) is turned into an opportunity.

Facing an inevitable bust?

I was a little alarmed by the comments from the head of the Australian operations of the Blockbuster video store operations this week.

In response to inquiries about the viability of the local concern in light of the likely bankruptcy of their US parent (well sort of parent – it’s pretty much an international franchising setup with the distinct Aussie entity using the US mob’s brand, systems etc), Paul Uniacke indicated (in effect) that he saw no significant threat from alternatives to his bricks and mortar operations. This is despite the US version experiencing a 16% sales drop in the last quarter.

His argument is that Aussie consumers haven’t embraced mail-order DVD delivery offerings from startup competitors, nor have they shifted to streaming/download options.

I would think the missing word there is “yet“.  Surely it is only a matter of time before wandering up to an understocked, inconvenient video store becomes as quaint and antique an idea as using a phone box or sending a telegram?

He is right that the actual decline in store-based DVD rentals hasn’t happened here yet, but I am certain growth slowed a while back, and that decline is just around the corner.

Mail order might not the threat its proponents hoped for, but streaming will be (as demonstrated already by the utilisation of illegal and legal download services).  The much vaunted upgrade in Aussie broadband infrastructure will greatly facilitate this.

The strategic lesson: just because technology and socio-cultural effects haven’t kicked in yet, don’t fob them off as irrelevant.  Learn lessons from similar and more advanced markets.

Blockbuster Australia should be looking very, very hard at web-based video delivery (although, I must say, I can’t see that much in their existing resources and capabilities that would see them out-perform Amazon, Apple or even Telstra on this front). Alternatively, they’ve got to find something interesting to do with all of the stores.

As an aside, my local Blockbuster has halved in floorspace in the past year, and still looks empty every time I walk past…