Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Scenario Planning for Disruptive Technologies

This chapter challenges managers to look at what potential disruptive technologies may change their company. In this chapter, the print news is used as an example. The print news meets the Internet and how news will be produced for customers and how those customers change. This is important to put into the context of the time the chapter was written and compared to the time the book was published and what happened now after the book has been out to see some of these scenarios play themselves out. This is indeed an interesting chapter.

The book sets the stage with the challenges of newspaper companies like Knight-Ridder, Times Mirror, Dow Jones and puts them in the real challenge of the new Internet that was really just starting to emerge in 1997. There was discussion about what managers of the newspaper companies did at that time to help plan for the next decade, from 1997 to 2007. At that time there were so many challenges and even more unanswered questions. The authors said that many different scenarios could be developed as possible for the future of newspapers.

The chapter then outlines the ten steps for constructing scenarios. This scenario development can force managers to think in much different ways than in the past. Everyone knows the steps that go into planning a climb to the top of a high mountain. There are common accepted problems to prepare for. Once you begin to plan for the variations outside of control of the common planning do you get to the root of planning for the unexpected and challenging problems of scenario planning for disruptive technologies. Scenario planning in this chapters includes “…jointly developing stories about the future, in a disciplined but imaginative way…”.

This is a difficult chapter to do in practice because it is hard to imagine all the potential scenarios. Even further than that is the difficulty in preparing to deal with each scenario in a responsible way. As is the case for Knight-Ridder all of the scenarios discussed in this book appeared to be at least a part of the future of the company. They tried to expand their presence on the Internet and generate revenues outside of the traditional trends in the newspaper business. The company was sold and broken up in 2006 and did not get through the 10 year outlook that was studied in this chapter. They did appear to work through several opportunities and challenges discussed in the scenarios.

Further research:

Today the problems facing traditional newspapers is significantly compounded by the economic crisis and the downturn in overall business. On top of the increasing amount of news from the Internet, it appears like the scenarios discussed in the chapter did not include any type of scenario like there is today.

The fundamental protection of free press outlined in the US constitution appears to be threatened even more than could be predicted in 2000. Now there are newspapers again setting up scenarios and working to identify how to generate revenue in new ways in the face of technology as well as in a down market.

In today’s meetings at the headquarters of most newspapers, there are similar planning meetings like the ones discussed in this chapter. The Idaho Statesman has been through some difficult changes in the past few months. The Internet has changed how they generate revenue. Taking some parts of the previous chapter, they have changed their asset profile with the acquisition of the printing presses in Nampa. The Idaho Press Tribune has closed its operations, but the asset was valuable to the Idaho Statesman and a combination, of sorts, between two struggling newspapers.

One small comment on newspaper and reporters, in general. There was a small article a few days ago about the meeting for the Idaho Transportation Department. There was a statement about the lack of coverage of meetings of the ITD recently. It was attributed to the fact that reporters are not able to cover each meeting like they have done in the past. Many items that are important to the public and worthy of news are being left out because the Idaho Statesman cannot keep all the reporters on staff. Granted, there may be other reasons for the lack of coverage, but it is true for sure that less staff to report on the news can affect how the public is able to gather information.


http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/20/a_hybrid_path_for_saving_newspapers/

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=Knight-ridder&n=10&prev=131&frow=141&page=15


Discussion Questions:

This current financial crisis is not something that any newspaper could have planned for. This situation falls into a crisis situation that many companies may not be able to endure. What will the next ten years have for the newspapers?

Now that the ten years predicted in the book have come to pass, what parts still hold true? I find myself wondering how instant communication has changed the idea of newspapers and even just ‘news’ for that matter. Now whenever something happens, it is rapidly spread all across the globe. How does this near-real-time-news change with the demands of customers? Are all of us customers who demand instant access to the news which is impossible for any newspaper or magazine to deliver.

Verification and authentication are common problems with this instant-news trend. What do the newspapers do to help prevent miss-information from getting in the way of their revenue generating forecasts?