Also, this post calls to mind The Mosquito Coast, a film and novel about a mad scientist who brings an ice-making machine to the Central American jungle, imagining himself a savior of the natives who have never seen ice. But the ice melts, the machine has to be destroyed, and the inventor turns out to be the one who needs help. Something to consider.

On the web, here’s the thing: Whether something transforms well or not, you better transform or you’re toast. The web is incredibly dynamic. This article reminds me of something Terry Matthews said at a recent talk: “You must evolve, or you will die.” According to Matthews, Nortel’s fatal flaw was their inability to embrace a collaborative business model. They rejected a partnership with Mitel, because they were stuck in an old [hierarchical] paradigm.

Some aspects of your business must remain constant however, for financial, operational, marketing, sales and branding reasons.

This presents a challenging, but critical problem: finding the balance between consistency and adaptability.

Thanks for getting my wheels turning.

There are major factors that you don’t mention:

-ice harvesting and delivery is NOT a business model that transforms well into the design, manufacture, and support of machinery. Junior and Bubba were probably loggers and farmers in the warm weather and would not have had the ability to design, build, install or troubleshoot early compressor-based refrigeration systems. It’s like saying that these same companies should have built their own power plants too.

-Many of the original ice harvesting and factory operations still exist today. They leveraged their expertise in _distribution_ and customer service. An example is Leominster Ice and Oil in Massachusetts. Started as an Ice Factory in the early 1900s. Still sells bagged ice and home heating oil today.

-Ice 2.0 and 3.0 were emergent technologies that drove major changes in the world. But emergent technologies are always risky. There are several early refrigeration companies that failed. What if you bought an early model that had no parts or service available? Did you buy an Amiga computer? A Beta VCR? Ever hear of the mechanical television? Visicalc/Wordstar/WordPerfect/OS2/MS BOB? HD-DVD? Those all seemed like pretty good bets at the time.

There have always been emergent technologies that never made it. The people of the day don’t have hindsight at their disposal so their decisions can’t be taken in the same context.

The business lesson here: Don’t jump into something you can’t handle just because it’s the “next big thing.” Stick with your core competency and adapt to find your niche as the world changes. Or jump from “next big thing” to “next big thing” and either get rich quick or go broke trying.

There are other examples, where a business does not necessarily pursue a trend to stay in the same business but changes their business to adapt to what is a demand product at the time. Nokia is a good example. They did not start out as a company that manufactures mobile phones, i do not remember the exact businesses but they were involved in at least 2 or 3 other business before going to mobile phones.

But your little mention neglected two things:

1) It was a short-lived business
2) It was singularly meant for stock quotes (not just random telegraphs)
3) He had a mainstream stock quote service, so this was an adjunct to the business, not the main one.

Can you find a better analogy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reuter