All about DisruptionThere are a lot of predicaments that prevent an appropriate response to disruption. Even when the technical foundations for this disruption come from within the company.Became a habit already since March, with every newsletter a new video. Not this time, the already prepared videos can only be published after some patent applications.
If you look at Kodak until 1991, Kodak should actually be the world market leader in digital cameras. All the technical prerequisites were there, but they didn't really dare to get started so as not to jeopardize their business with chemical films.
Tesla was founded in 2003. For the first product, they recombined several existing technologies: The body from a Lotus sports car and the 18650 lithium battery cells used in notebooks. Of course, a lot of new development had to be done, but no development of a new body and no development of own battery cells were the crucial savings to be able to come to the market with the available development budget with the Tesla Roadster.
In the fall of 1996, Baremetal.com was my first content provider, the service provider where I hosted my websites. Incredibly cheap compared to Austrian and German providers at that time. There were some moderate price reductions, but in 2013 the monthly bill was around 200 €. I switched to ALL-inkl.com, there my annual bill is 100 €, annual bill, not monthly bill! It was simply not possible for Baremetal.com to pass on the industry standard price cuts to existing customers. Perhaps they created a new brand for offers with contemporary prices. For existing customers, they simply hoped that they would not notice for a while that the prices were no longer up to date. Today, suppliers of super sports cars with internal combustion engines are in the same situation: hoping that there will continue to be very rich freaks to whom the sounds of internal combustion engines are worth a lot of money: The €3 million Bugatti Chiron can't compete with a €150 thousand Tesla Plaid S in a 1/4 mile sprint.
In 1981, Osborne introduced a portable computer. Sales of the 1st model collapsed when the 2nd model was announced far too early. Bankruptcy in 1983 was the result. To avoid this Osborne effect, so much disinformation about electric cars is spread: The established car companies depend on the revenues from the sale of combustion cars to be able to finance the switch to electric cars. For the old car companies, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) against electric cars is central to being able to finance the switch to electric cars: Until they are able to produce millions of electric cars, existing customers still have to buy enough combustion engines. Have you ever had to inform your bank that your current sales have unfortunately halved? In most cases, all loans are then called in.
The Waiting for Godot strategy: "Electric cars are only an interim solution, wait a little longer for the hydrogen car." The development budget for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is paid for out of the advertising budget to retain existing customers. Every existing customer who believes in this advertising and simply wants to skip the electric car will dutifully order his next combustion engine.
There are a lot of predicaments that prevent an appropriate response to disruption. Even when the technical basis for that disruption comes from within the company. Have a chat about this with a Kodak manager next time you meet one. All of the examples given here involved globally active groups that should have had sufficient potential, both in terms of capital and management, to react appropriately to disruption. In the case of prefabricated houses, on the other hand, 1300 employees are enough to achieve market leadership in the German-speaking world. There are no international ambitions. They even sell houses that are unsuitable for the possible climate changes of the next 30 years in their own sales area. A design basis of -12° for heating is unsuitable if the Gulf Stream fails. But just because it can get extremely cold in the winter doesn't mean you're protected from extreme heat in the summer. See record temperatures on the Canadian west coast last summer. At the same latitude as Hamburg, the Canadian west coast requires heating to -40°. There you also have to lay a water pipe 2 m deep to be frost-proof. What does a concrete foundation do if water expands underneath it when it freezes? All construction guidelines here are designed for the continued existence of the Gulf Stream. Seriously, they sell houses that are only suitable for the current climate of Central Europe. ClimateProtectionSuperiorityHouse, on the other hand, means not only making a maximum contribution to climate protection, but also being protected in the best possible way against the consequences of climate change.
For a long time I have been following the price development on the EEX - European Energy Exchange. Especially since it is possible to buy and sell electricity at EEX prices. In the first lockdown in 2020, the EEX Month Ahead future dropped below 4 cents/kWh. If you plan to offer houses with extremely much photovoltaic, then a reasonable high price for the solar power is very important. Always interesting the comparison between Awattar, where you get paid for electricity at Month Ahead Future and to Spotty-Energy, where the hourly day-ahead future applies. In September, it was just over 10 cents, and in October, just over 11 cents. For November, it's a completely bonkers 19.870 cents. Below that, it's noted that the 2020 average was a low 3.870 cents. So for November, it's 5.13 times the 2020 average. These are not sustainable prices, but a speculative bubble. You can't argue with such prices either: "You sell 20,000 kWh of electricity per year at 19.870 cents, that's 3974 € per year". If you argue for a demand-based feed-in at 10 cents and for self-consumption at 20 cents, it is quite sufficient to justify photovoltaics and accumulators: 20,000 x 10 cents 8,000 x 20 cents are still 3,600 €. This means a realistic argument would be based on half of the November 2021 EEX Month Ahead Future.
In all the years until the video about the lecture in Unken, there were 97 subscribers. Since then, and especially since March 2021, the number of subscribers has increased to 238. More than in all the years before. Please subscribe to my channel! |
