Extinction has a finality to it. Once something goes extinct, you can’t bring it back to life unless a movie made about an extinct creature counts as bringing it back to life.
Do you ever wish you had seen a dinosaur?
I sure wish I had.
They are truly fascinating creatures who look like they came straight out of mythology, much like the Loch Ness monster. But while the Loch Ness monster is a figment of someone’s imagination, dinosaurs actually walked the earth millions of years ago, making their existence all the more fascinating.
Coming back to today, the statistic about the number of species going extinct isn’t that great. Scientists estimate that .01% of species go extinct every year. Assuming there are approximately 2 million species, well, do the math.
Tigers, gorillas, rhinos, orangutans sea turtles among many others, are all facing extinction to varying degrees.
Why is extinction such a big deal?
Well, extinction has a finality to it. Once something goes extinct, you can’t bring it back to life unless a movie made about an extinct creature counts as bringing it back to life.
On the other hand, human beings evolved from apes. That is they changed form. Apes didn’t go extinct but by means of evolution, they gave way to a new species.
Now let’s apply the concept of extinction to the real world.
Here are a few things that were around a decade or so back, which you don’t see much of, or have lost their relevance:
a) Floppy disks
b) Compact discs
c) CD and DVD players
d) Fax machines
e) Landlines
f) Cameras — analog and digital
It might seem that all of these are either dead or are on their deathbed.
Now, if you look a little closer, you will realize that most of these have merely changed form.
The traditional cameras that we used to use changed form to digital cameras and have now settled down on cell phone cameras.
Cassettes became CDs became mp3s became listening to music on streaming services.
Communication, taking photographs, music, none of these have gone away. They have merely changed form.
Here’s where most of the lag happens — getting used to a new form.
Michael Jackson’s magnum opus Thriller has sold 65 million copies worldwide. It’s the largest selling album of all time and no one will even come close to beating that record ever. Why?
Well, music tastes have changed over the years and gazillion new artists have come into the picture. But no artist, however popular they are, will ever sell that many copies of an album. It can be argued that Thriller is a once-in-a-lifetime album. That’s partly true.
But there is another very obvious reason — people don’t buy cassettes and CDs anymore!
Back in the day, an artist could have one massive hit album and actually live off the royalties for the rest of their lives. Today, unless they tour, living off a hit album is a pipe dream. They make good money but not the kind artists made before mp3 tore into the music industry.
The advertising industry faced a similar problem when it didn’t make a transition from mainline (print and TV) advertising to digital advertising. So you had extremely talented professionals who thought that doing anything less than a TV commercial was below their dignity. Social media posts, in-app copy, writing for websites, making videos at low budgets, all of these were frowned down upon. But all of these too require storytelling skills and creativity. In other words, they failed to realize that something had changed form rapidly.
Work is becoming more entrepreneurial in nature because of the amount of information that is accessible. This also means a change in how traditional leadership works. Before, you needed a boss to learn and grow. Now you don’t. Organizations need leaders to create the DNA of an organization and be the conscience of a place, not to have employees keep looking over their backs to see if they’re being watched.
Marketing has changed form.
Leadership has changed form.
Television has changed form.
Advertising has changed form.
Communication has changed form.
All of these are changes that need to be navigated.
Shawn Fanning invented Napster, the first peer to peer music sharing platform in 1999. It was the earliest form of the mP3.
How did the music industry react? They came down on him and tried to drown his creation.
Artists like Metallica and Dr.Dre filed a lawsuit against Napster. They were not wrong. All they were asking for was control of their music and for the effort that they put. On the other hand, customers had been held hostage to costly cassettes and CDs and saw it as payback.
Whatever it was, no one could stop the digital music tsunami that lashed the music industry, changing it forever.
The record industry shot itself in the foot when the way people listened to music changed form but Steve Jobs and Apple grabbed the opportunity.
The auto industry is currently facing a massive slowdown. A stimulus package, at best, can work as a temporary measure.
But the one question no one seems to be asking is — what is the future of vehicles powered by fossil fuels? Is it time to make a massive shift to electric vehicles instead of constantly trying to fight for the status quo?
Googling symptoms and self-medicating is a major problem that can have tragic consequences. That’s why a few apps are offering online consultations with doctors. Googling symptoms doesn’t mean we don’t need doctors. It just means we probably also need an option to have access to a doctor without always taking an appointment and waiting for long hours.
Advertising went from two mediums (print and television) to more than you can count in less than a decade. Advertising isn’t dead. What is probably dead is looking at things through an old lens.
In the new economy, things will constantly keep changing form. Many will just be iterations of what currently exists and a few will overhaul the status quo. Doesn’t mean we have to keep up with each and every change. It isn’t feasible as much as it is impossible.
But if a new form is eating into your business, or making the old way of doing things redundant, or is actually better, you can’t blame anyone for not taking the steps toward understanding it.
