Change for the Sake of Change: http://bit.ly/9tZV9m (by @baekdal ).The absolute worst expression I know is "you shouldn't change for the sake of change". Every time I hear that, my blood begins to boil and I get really annoyed. If you shouldn't change for the sake of change, then when should you?
Should you change when you competitors are taking over your market and steal your customers? No, that is too late.
Should you change when you can no longer buy spare parts, or the get material you need? No, same problem.
So when should you change?
Should you change when the market grows to a certain size? Well, yes. But you would be much more successful if you had been the one who changed the market. Apple could have made just another Smartphone, but they decided to create the iPhone and changed the market. Apple could also have decided to simply make an MP3 player, but the integrated the iPod into iTunes and changed the music industry.
Should you change when a specific need arises? That is actually a good one. A lot of successful companies are making fortunes doing just that. The problem with this, however, is that people who say "you shouldn't change for the sake of change" would never see this in time.
Just look at Google. They are currently working on Google Wave, possible the next generation email platform. And you might say that they are merely trying to solve the collaboration problems we have today with email. But they didn't start making it today. They started several years ago.
Back then there was no specific need for the change to happen. It was simple a couple of people who had a vision, so they decided to 'change' something.
Change is the key to staying successful. If you don't change you lose.
There are two far more important reasons why you should change.
Being successful means being a leader. If you want to be successful on Twitter, then you need to a person that people want to follow. If you want to create a tribe, you need to lead the tribe.
And you cannot be a leader by watching where other people go. You need to be the one who facilitates change.
Everyone knows that you need to be an innovator to succeed. Companies that do not focus on innovation will eventually lose. Just look at Yahoo! They forgot the concept of innovation (for a while) and started to focus on 'business stability', and look how that turned out.
Microsoft forgot to innovate IE, and suddenly Firefox swooped in. Samsung forgot to innovate and Apple swooped in. The Republican Party forgot to innovate how they connected with their voters, and Obama swooped in and became president.
What does it mean to be an innovator? Well, "innovation" is simply another word for "change". Innovation means changing the status quo... or to use a better phrase "change for the sake of change".
An innovator is one who wakes up every morning and says "today I am going to change something".
Change is the single most important thing that you must do, both as a person and as a company.
Changing for the sake of change doesn't mean that you should change everything all the time. That would be silly. It means that you need to change the important parts of you business.
You can divide this into 3 categories:
Please, change for the sake of change.
There is one question that I hear all the time. Is Facebook going to last, or is it just a fad? My answer is always the same. If you are trying to find an excuse for not doing “social,” then Facebook is here to stay. But, if you ask “is Facebook going to last?” Then the answer is no; it’s already dying.
Yesterday, Steve Jobs posted a long article about why he doesn't like Flash, and made it abundantly clear that Flash will not be on Apple devices - or even remotely support it on other devices.
Journalists don't have the right to aid criminals, but many apparently think they do. You probably already know the story about the stolen/lost iPhone 4G, but let me summarize it.
It has been a couple of weeks since Apple announced the iPad. The dust has settled down (somewhat), and the world is once again spinning in the right direction. We have all seen a million articles about what people think. And surveys have been made, pointing out that the hype was indeed over-hyped (as always).
It has to be hard being Apple. A few days ago Apple held its annual music press event, and the amount of rumors before it were intense. It was impossible for them to even satisfy the skeptics.
Yesterday the world stopped. Well... Okay, what really happened was that Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal was down for hours.
Yesterday Google announced that it was going to make their browser based operating system. And within seconds there was a million tweets from people all saying that Google Chrome OS is going to kill Windows. But you know, I do not think that is going to happen at all. Here is why.
A number of people have pointed me towards "Twitter for busy people", to which I responded "Twitter for busy people is crap. How are mouse-over images an efficient way to read text? What where they thinking?"
Audi has created a movie about the legendary 24 hours of Le Mans, from Audi's perspective. It is a thrilling story, about what it takes to be a part of this amazing event. Definitely worth a look, if you are into this sort of thing.
Every single year, ICANN have a meeting, and on the agenda is 'what new top level domains should we introduce'. And every single year a number of groups propose their own top-level domains. For instance, Al Gore, along with some Hollywood celebrities, are proposing .eco. But do we really need new domains?
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