Hindsight is a wonderful thing

Old Camera

I read the other day that UCAS applications for university were down for a second year running. This maybe something that universities should not only care about, they should be worrying about this and thinking about their planning for the next few years, even the next ten years.

I also read that Intel, the computer chip manufacturer were laying off 15% of their staff having failed to respond in an effective way to the use of ARM chips, first by Apple and then by many other PC manufacturers.

Throw in a podcast I listened to in the car the other day when stuck in traffic on the M5, which covered companies that failed to change. This included Kodak who did not adapt to the introduction of digital cameras, magazine publishers who didn’t understand the web, and even record stores that couldn’t adapt to the introduction of CDs or downloads.

Before I discuss the impact of the drops in applications for universities, it will provide some insights into looking at what is happening to Intel and looking back at other major companies that failed to respond to (usually digital) disruption. It should be said that hindsight is a wonderful thing.

When I started working at City of Bristol College in the early 1990s (it was Brunel College then), I worked in the Faculty of Business, Food, and Hairdressing. A large diverse faculty, and across the many staff we shared a single 286 personal computer. The 286 was the name of the chip that powered the computer. Intel at the time was the biggest chip manufacturer in the world. I read in the book, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, that it had successfully transitioned from a manufacturer of computer memory to one that made computer core chips.

In the 1990s I remember upgrading computers to a 386 and then a 486. I remember the marketing hype that arrived in 1993 when Intel named the 586, the Pentium, in order to differentiate it from other chip manufacturers.

In 2002 I moved over to the Apple platform, buying a G4 PowerBook and later a G5 Power Mac. I was, like many Mac users, a little concerned when Apple announced the move to Intel back in 2005. However all wasn’t’ well for Intel, when they failed to deliver on the needs of Apple. Apple moved to fabricating their own chips, first for their iOS devices and then their Mac lineup. Apple announced in 2020 that they would be moving all their Mac models away from Intel chips to ARM processors. The M1, M2 and now the M3 chips power all their current models.

The problem for Intel, and probably is why they are now having problems, was that they didn’t just lose a customer when Apple moved to ARM, other computer manufacturers in an attempt to maintain market share and compete with Apple also started building ARM powered computers. Intel had not only lost Apple, they were also now losing considerable market share.

This month we saw Intel decided they needed to cut costs and have cut 15% of their staff. Will this be enough, maybe, but probably not.

The podcast I listened to discussed how Kodak did not adapt well to the digital revolution in photography.

It was interesting as it wasn’t as though Kodak ignored digital, they actually produced a handheld digital camera back in 1975.

However, company executives were reluctant to make a strong pivot towards digital technology, since it would require heavy investment, make the core business of film unprofitable, and put the company into direct competition with established firms in the computer hardware industry.

One of their own employees had written in 1979 that photography would completely shift to digital by 2010.

Kodak knew that digital was going to disrupt the market for photography. However they were unwilling to pivot and shift from their core business. They couldn’t see what they needed to change, as they were concerned with protecting their existing business.

Their customers and consumers made the move to digital and there were plenty of other companies out there who were being innovative and designing, developing and making the (digital) photography products that were being demanded.

It also probably didn’t help that Fujifilm started competing directly with Kodak in the US (and worldwide) in the 1980s.

You could say that Kodak didn’t adapt to the changes happening to their sector.  Kodak weren’t blind to the threats posed to their business, they knew what digital meant for photography, they designed and built digital photography products. However they failed to change enough to make a difference.

In 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

There are lots of other examples of how organisations and companies did not respond to changes and trends. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as you can ask, why didn’t they change, they could see the challenge, they could have changed, they could have adapted.

The problem often is that though internally the organisation may know it needs to change, the current situation means they are unable to change.

That radical step is make radical change knowing that this will have a potentially negative impact on the business and your customers.

So is the drop in applications a bump or a trend? That we don’t know, but maybe we will this time next year.

So universities may know and realise that they need to change, but they can’t afford to make those changes now. As a result they may never change.

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