Blog #3 Personal reflections on "Seven ways to fail big"

I read the article titled Seven Ways to Fail big by Carroll an Mui. Although the article published almost ten years ago, it still applies to today's world. I would like to mention a few points I felt strongly about:

"Stubbornly Staying the Course"is one of the 7 ways to fail big according to this article. For students who are studying strategy, I found this one should not be ignored by many of us. CEO and the leaders in any successful companies might develop strong confidence in their personal ability and the company's strength and success after running the company from small to big, from nothing to some major players in the market. The confidence might leads to mistakes, simply because we are too confident on what we have been doing has been proved to be successful. However time has been changing everyday. The article use Kodak as an example  and explain that  Many companies don’t change course because of this: The economics of the new model don’t measure up to the economics of the old. Based on the article, Kodak’s executives couldn’t fathom a world in which images were evanescent and never printed. The company fought only a rear-guard action against digital cameras and didn’t make a big move into the space until the early 2000s. It now has a share of the online photo-posting market, but its hesitation was costly: Over the past decade, Kodak has lost 75% of its stock market value.  

It reminds of a few weeks ago when I was going to Macy in Pittsburgh Waterfront to shop. To my surprise, Macys in Waterfront was closed.  The huge store was empty and the doors were closed.  Several years ago, I heard the Macys in downtown was closed and now the Macys in Waterfront was closed recently too. I came home and called Macy's to close my credit card because I personally do not want to keep the card while there is no store near my home. I think Macys lost me as a customer for almost forever. Of course what I can buy is very limited but I believe I am not alone. There are thousands of people who are like me and they might be closing the Macy's card and may never return to Macy's or even Macy's website for shopping.  There are many reasons why they are closing Macys store, but we also notice Sears in Pittsburgh was closing too at Ross shop mall area. Why?  I think one of the reasons is the fast moving technology and people's behavior change due to internet online shopping and other trends. 

Could Macy's or other similar stores  do better to avoid this?  There are some reasons that they have to close the stores which are not always under their control, but within their control, could they do better to adopt better strategy to avoid this? I know many Chinese people loves to buy a lot of hot deals in Macy's (both online and offline) and sold them to China for huge profit. Could Macy grasp this huge market on the planet by focus on most popular goods? or even open an store in China as there is a growing middle class in China now? 

The executives in charge should always make sure they are open minded to adjust their strategy. Or just have one of the strategy defined as "willing to change" to adapt any new technology change. 

As the article says, had the executives in charge taken a look at history, they could have saved themselves and their investors a great deal of trouble. Again and again in our study, seven strategies accounted for failure, and evidence of their inadvisability was there for the asking.