The current Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story on the U.S. Postal Service can be read as a bill of particulars in the case against a company unchanged in 200 years or as evidence that even the best business, when locked in amber, suffocates.
The postal service is both. “The USPS is a wondrous American creation…For the price of a 44¢ stamp, you can mail a letter anywhere within the nation’s borders. The service will carry it by pack mule to the Havasupai Indian reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Mailmen on snowmobiles take it to the wilds of Alaska. If your recipient can no longer be found, the USPS will return it at no extra charge. It may be the greatest bargain on earth.”
The problem is that such commitment is no match for innovation. Witness the rise of email and overnight delivery — neither of which are the primary province of the postal service. Innovate or die, it seems, is proved again.
A dozen years ago or so, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen looked closely as the way technology was remaking markets and concluded that “companies’ successes and capabilities can actually become obstacles in the face of changing markets and technologies.”
This point was made recently again, this time in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. In the “Ambidextrous CEO,” researchers concluded that “(a)lthough most executives acknowledge the need to explore new businesses and markets, they almost always bow to the more-pressing claims of the core business.”
As a result, “innovation (is) at a disadvantage as it struggles to match up to a well-established business that has proven itself.”
Ultimately, there may be a skunk in all this. No, not the proverbial critter at the dinner party, but the one that gave its name to the landmark Lockheed Aircraft “skunk works.” Driven to innovate by the demands of supplying aircraft for the military in World War II, the idea was to keep objective-driven development from under the weight of any General’s opinion.
What was sound practice in the ’40s makes as much sense 70 years later.
Yet there still are far more examples of companies falling short, as did Toyota in dealing with the problem of sudden acceleration, than exceeding expectations as Steve Jobs and Apple have. With financial and market share fortunes closely tracking the trajectory of a company’s success (or failure), it is hard to see how the lessons have not already been learned.
