Take a moment to rethink about what is happening now in the automakers industry! Why are the traditional car brands facing their Kodak moment despite of good car sales record? History does repeat itself. Actually, what happened with Kodak is already happening in other industries too. If you are like watching evening news; you might have come across the most familiar images of the NYSE loud ringing bell signalling opening or closing of the day’s trading. No more trade-off deals intension on that particular day.
For a thriving brand, the best way to understand future priorities is not just about seeing their investment re-allocation but also how their people think; how their leaders behave innovatively. In retrospective, what happened with the Kodak; they didn’t only discover the digital camera but also decided to bury it, as they were frightened to innovate; they decided to kill their golden opportunities. The new motto is “innovate or perish.” Is your brand about to perish? The traditional car companies have failed to innovate; opting to work hard innovating ads for display on bill boards while their large factories are becoming increasingly obsolete. Saudi Arabia was fuelling almost all traditional cars. However, the shift to electric vehicles by far has made Chile, the new Saudi Arabia due to its largest lithium deposits in the world. Lithium is vital in manufacturing EV batteries.
As far as innovation is concerned, who can be mad at Elon Musk’s tweets? Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionare was quoted saying that Tesla was his “second-largest personal investment.” And he also gave a passionate defense of Elon Musk by criticizing the media’s coverage of him and Tesla suggesting that it’s “overly harsh and shortsighted.” In a way, since then things at Tesla have started changing for better as more tycoons are ready to invest their money.
Unfortunately, the brands with fixed mindset think that the digital world needs to change rather than otherwise. As such, those brands feel entitled to more market share. That the digital world must recognise their long outdated un-sustainable ways of innovating and treat them accordingly. The next dilemma. Here, he is,
“Elon Musk; and Tesla’s Electric Car, “ just to mention only one of his inventions; he is out- innovating multiple industries which have failed to adapt to changing market circumstances. His premier path to success is unprecedented. When you look at his Tesla brand which is still a startup but already outselling Mercedes-Benz; which had been since immemorial. Something is cooking up as the conventional wisdom is being challenged. Kodak moment in action for Mercedes-Benz brand.
Elon Musk’s 15 minutes daily twitter activities in a way have been a distraction for his brand. All entrepreneurs have a stubbornly eccentric character. If Henry Ford, the visionary behind the development of the assembly line had access to Twitter, Musk’s tweets would be “pretty lenient” comparatively.
In a way, the Tesla brand thanked SEC for the punishment offered as they said it’s “worthy it”. Thanks to all the startup brands that are not yet there, but are innovatively moving ahead.
Enabling environment is key to innovation and it must be nurtured and pushed rather than complaints. Innovation has always been omnipresent at Tesla from its earliest days. The brand’s continued innovative culture has helped it go beyond the Kodak moments. In an effort to bring AI efficiency to ridesharing, Tesla self-drive and other features like self-parking are worth paying attention to; as it progresses further into the future of many revolutionary and evolutionary possibilities using in AI, big data and robotics in precautionary manner.
