- John Rogers is an author, former CEO, and founder of RL Leaders, a consulting team that solves complex challenges for public and private sector organizations.
- He says many major business fail for one reason: rigidity of thought.
- These companies, that were once industry leaders, can fall from success if they refuse to evolve and work to stay ahead of the curve.
- Rogers suggests that businesses take a "Hollywood-style, science fiction" approach to their work by thinking drastically outside the box when imagining and creating the products and services of the future.
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Of the companies that made up the Fortune 500 list in 1955, only 60 remained by 2016. None of them set out to fail, nor did their leaders decide to stop serving customers. Instead, they fell into the trap of rigidity of thought. Prisoners of their own perspective, they resisted the call to change.
Courtesy of John Rogers
John Rogers.
Yet heeding the call to change is barely enough to stay afloat in today's brutally competitive, ever-evolving environment. You need to get ahead of the curve - far ahead - anticipating the next major product or consumer trend. Otherwise, you risk going the way of Kodak and Toys R Us.
This involves doing the sort of thinking that dreamed up game-changing gadgets such as the cell phone. The kind that envisioned the precursor to Google translate and bionic eyes. Or that might, in the future, invent devices such as the transporter that famously "beamed up Scottie" of Star Trek.