Creative Collison - If Google bought Addidas 2010

I received a lot of emails with questions on the presentation I posted yesterday. They were mostly asking about how industries converge and how creative destruction happens. Not a simple question to answer but we all agree that “drawing of lines” between industry boundaries is becoming ever more difficult (or even possible at all) in today's disruptive technology-driven business climate. Products become services and services are powered by software. Then the interface deisgn humanized the interactions and thus becomes the brand. And your brand is out there in the networks which leaves you with little control. Social networks will soon be competing with search technologies; portable gaming device (you can make VOIP calls with Sony PSP and soon mobile calls) will compete with PDAs and even readers are now competing against media publishers.

The blurring of interindustry boundaries is attributed to such factors such as deregulation, globalization but mostly strategic (and democratic) use of technologies.

Most industries go through a "shakeout" phase during which the number of players in the industry declines. Industry output generally continues to rise, however, which implies a reallocation of capacity from exiting firms to incumbents and new entrants. Thus shakeouts seem to be classic creative destruction episodes. Shakeouts of firms tend to occur sooner in industries where technological progress is rapid (thanks to Google). I often employ scenario planning to help clients imagine the future. Here are a few interesting slides I want to share.  This was developed a year ago by Mike Smit and I to show hypothetically when two companies which operate in different industries can combine to create new markets. It is part of a larger “futuring” exercise and here are a few of those slides. The idea is "what if Google bought Addidas in 2010?"