Agile Management

Agile
Management

The fast and flexible approach
to continuous improvement
in organizations

Mike Hoogveld

Warden Press

© 2017 Mike Hoogveld

ISBN:

Paperback: 978-94-92004-39-0

E-book (Epub): 978-94-92004-40-6

E-book (Kindle): 978-94-92004-41-3

Original title: Agile managen. Snel en wendbaar werken

aan continue verbetering in organisaties

(Culemborg: Van Duuren Management, 2016).

Translated from the Dutch by James Campbell (thelastword.eu)

Cover design: Het Noorden Communiceert / Arjen Snijder, Assen

Interior design and lay-out: Villa Y / Andre Klijsen, Henxel

This edition published by Warden Press, Amsterdam

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

For Suzanne, Julius and Floris

Preface

I am, to be precise, 1 meter and 94 centimetres tall. And I weigh 93 kilos.

Quite a confession with which to start a book ... But it’s not my goal to confess to you something about my physical fitness. Or to see how quickly you can calculate my BMI (24.7). So, you might ask, why do I share this with you.

To give a little air to one of my small frustrations. And this is not about a too-short bed in a holiday cottage, impossible postures in an airplane seat, or the fact that there are still very few beautiful clothes available in my size. What then?

It has to do with sport. For example squash, which I find immensely enjoyable. Not to watch but to play. Only, I’m not so good at it, and that makes it a lot less fun. Losing all the time gets boring after a while. That’s why I stopped. Was it my technique? Tactical insight? Fitness? Sadly not. To put it clinically, it had everything to do with the inertia of mass.

For some reason, it seemed that all my opponents had the opposite physique to me. If we use a boxing analogy, they were clearly more ‘super flyweight’ and I was more ‘heavyweight’. And that led to a pretty unequal struggle, because strength is not so important in squash. It is mainly about tactics, technique and mobility. With regard to tactics and technique my opponents were not really superior to me, but in mobility … enough said. Because of their smaller bodies and lower weight they were simply much faster and more agile. Their nimble turning and sprinting meant they responded much easier and faster to unexpected shots. They adapted directly to my strokes while I crashed into the walls feeling like a hippopotamus or simply fell over. After a while, in addition to a bad mood I also developed chronic pain in my lower back.

I experience something similar in other sports. If I join my talented son in a game of father-son football, I clearly don’t look like Messi, to put it mildly. And along the rugged mountain-bike trail here in the dunes I am always overtaken by men with small, light bodies. I thought maybe boxing would suit me, but my opponents seemed to be faster than their shadows; often I felt like the punch bag.

Initially I thought it was me: I was just too slow. But friends with similar physiques to mine seem to have exactly the same exasperation. They also avoid sports that require agility, manoeuvrability and quick adjustments. Like them, I focus now on sports in which these factors play a negligible role, such as golf, rowing, swimming, running and cycling. Sports with predictable movements. And I stick with those (sports such as bowling, curling and darts I leave to others, no matter how beautiful the shirts they wear).

What struck me, about the sports that are better suited for my physique, is that smaller, lighter men often are incredibly good at these too. And, naturally, that got me thinking: it seems like properties such as speed, agility and manoeuvrability make the difference in sports characterised by frequent dynamic movements. That triggered my curiosity in my work as a consultant and in my PhD research. Could it be that the qualities of speed, agility and manoeuvrability might also be important for organizations? So that organizations operating in dynamic environments, that have these characteristics, are more successful than organizations that lack them, or have them to a lesser extent?

So, a decade or so ago, I came across the path of agility and dived deeply and completely into it. There was a kind of snowball effect. While reading and interviewing I was inspired by Darwin’s discoveries, by Juran’s rediscovery of Pareto’s 80/20 rule and by Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to continuous improvement. By Toyota’s success and preface

Boyd’s OODA cycle. By the possibilities Scrum offers and the incredible results achieved in English cycling. And in recent years also by the Lean Startup methodology. Fantastic; a whole new world opened up for me.

What immediately struck me in my consulting practice was that very few organizations are really agile. Most were able to adjust to competitor or customer changes in the market, but only very slowly, while they just complained that change kept happening and that it kept happening faster and faster. They lacked adaptability and, moreover, they were totally unaware of the phenomenon of agility.

Therefore I decided to translate my insights into a process suited to those organizations, by combining proven methodologies and, where necessary, supplementing them with my own solutions. Through experimentation I finely honed the concepts into an ‘agile management’ approach which, in principle, can be applied to almost any organization.

The insights I gained during my fascinating journey, I would like to share with you, in the form of this book. It combines theoretical knowledge with a practical approach and practical tools. I hope this can inspire you as I too was inspired by the many books, articles, videos, studies, lectures, conversations, projects and case studies that I have used.

I wish you lots of fun and success with your own agile voyage of discovery!

Mike Hoogveld

Bergen, February 2017

“

Good is
the enemy
of great.

JIM COLLINS

1 Introduction

This chapter helps you to get a grip on the contents of this book. It provides you with an introduction to the phenomenon of agility and makes it clear why this is relevant to your organization. It tells you what agile management is and is not, and what kind of problems agile management can solve for you. Furthermore, it offers you a brief overview of the content of the following chapters, so you can navigate quickly and easily through the book.

1.1 The organization as a top athlete

If you look at professional sports, what do you think is the difference between a rower and a wild-water kayaker? Between a speed skater and an ice-hockey player? A road-cyclist and a mountain biker? Or between a Formula 1 driver and a rally driver?

Maybe, in general you see a lot of similarities. All the athletes in these comparisons should be disciplined, train a lot, eat healthily, be mentally and physically in top shape, have good equipment and so on. Yet there is an important difference. The first of each pair focuses on a predictable and known course. The one who performs as efficiently and quickly as possible is the winner. A prior strategy can be formulated. The second, however, has a very different challenge. He has to deal with unexpected events and changing circumstances. This requires anticipation and improvisation. The person who responds the quickest and is the most flexible is the winner.

And something else interesting is going on. The first of the two would fail completely if he went onto the course of the second. A rowing scull would sink immediately on a white-water river. A specialist 5,000 meter speed-skater couldn’t keep up in a hockey game. A road bike is unusable on bumpy mountain trails or loose sand. And Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 car would be useless in the Paris-Dakar. Conversely, though, the second athlete is often very capable at the sport of the first and can deliver acceptable performance. He can adjust; he is more of an all-rounder than the first.

Now if you take a look at your own organization, can you see it as an elite athlete? And if so, which of the two types of athletes? How well does it adapt to unexpected events and changing circumstances? How fast, flexible and agile is it? How smart and nimble? How well does the organization anticipate and improvise? Is it a survivor?

These questions concern us, and therefore are central to this book. Here is a guide to how the book approaches these issues.

1.2 Accelerate

Changes in market conditions, in the approach of competitors, in the needs of customers and within your own organization are going ever faster and deeper. And for many organizations this is an enormous struggle. Most are unable to adapt, fully or quickly enough, to the circumstances. They lack resilience. It is a regular complaint of many executives that their organization simply cannot maintain such a breakneck pace.

They are under a tremendous risk, because it is their actual existence that is endangered. They either adapt or they die. Darwin demonstrated this for flora and fauna, but this does not only apply to organisms, but also to organizations. As you will read, later in this book, there are massive dynamics in the creation, growth, shrinking and disappearing of organizations. There are more and more start-ups, but, as a rule-of-thumb, 90% are gone again within five years. The number of bankruptcies and liquidations has been rising for a long time, well before the financial crisis. This doesn’t only apply to small businesses, but also global icons like Nokia, Saab and Kodak. To use a travel metaphor, these organizations were on a train to a fixed destination, when they really needed to be out exploring.

At the same time there are many examples of companies reinventing themselves, such as Apple, LEGO and Mini. And examples of companies that emerged from nowhere and through searching found their raison d’être: companies like Amazon, TomTom and easyJet.

The question is, how you can ensure that your organization will be a winner in tomorrow’s market. It turns out that agility plays a crucial role. As you’ll soon see, agility embraces flexibility and manoeuvrability. Adaptability is key. Literally translated, agility means the ability to move quickly and easily. Within the context of this book it encompasses terms like lightness, speed, sharpness, strength, focus and precision. The aim of agility is adaptivity, the responsive capacity of the organization to adapt flexibly to new requirements. There is an unmistakable need for speed. Everything revolves around minimizing timeto-market.

It might help to compare it with driving. Firstly, looking at traffic flows, you can see a big difference in the agility and responsiveness of lorries and buses compared to cars and motorcycles. Secondly, driving a car is a dynamic process; it is impossible to prepare for everything. Also, it makes no sense to learn all the roads and their traffic rules by heart. Because traffic is just like a flock of birds, a complex chaos of interacting road users who sometimes do very unexpected things. Moreover, there are road works, countless new roads and diversions and so on. So you get your driving licence on the basis of standard, existing criteria. Driving lessons begin with the theory. By studying traffic rules, you get insight into how road users should interact with each other, how you should behave and how you can recognize certain traffic situations. Then you go on to practise these, until whatever the traffic throws at you, you are able to apply insight and agility, so you can always respond quickly and appropriately. You do this, of course, by continually looking around you, choosing the right direction, monitoring your dashboard and where possible anticipating. And on you go in this continuous process. You accelerate, change gear, brake, use the lights, horn and turn signals, so you can drive smoothly in any traffic situation. In one word, you are improvising. In the beginning it is a bit rough (the insurance companies know all about that), but once you’ve got enough miles under your belt, you get faster and better. Eventually it becomes second nature, you do it intuitively and, perhaps worryingly, realise that sometimes you’ve been on ‘autopilot’.

And this is how you want it to be in your organization. This is the essence of agile management.

1.3 Agile management: in theory and practice

Agile management trusts that the process will deliver the desired agili ty and through this, the necessary adaptability. Increasingly, executives want to make their organizations agile, but do not know how. Or they have already taken their first steps and are wondering how they can roll out the approach or make it more professional; these are the people for whom this book is especially intended.

It is understandable that for many people agile carries the connotation of software development, because they know that is the origin of agile development approaches such as Scrum. For some time now, however, this approach has had a much wider application: in engineering, product development, research, marketing and project management of all kinds. The approach, in principle with a little customization where appropriate, can be applied in most parts of the organization, and not just in commercial enterprises. It fits well within nearly any kind of organization, including (semi-)governmental and non-profit, internal and external customers, services, products, channels, processes and so on.

But agility goes further than that: it pertains to factors such as customers, strategy, business models and propositions, leadership, culture, staffing, systems, processes, information, collaboration, experimenting, metrics and more. And that’s what this book is all about. It examines the full breadth of agility and does so from two perspectives. Part one offers theoretical insights to understand the relevance of agili ty to your organization. It uses real examples to explain why change is happening so frequently and increasingly at fundamental levels. It also tells you how to anticipate change and how agility-thinking started.

You will see that it is applicable in the majority of situations you might encounter. You will learn why experimentation and failure are important and what are the other principles upon which agile management is based.

Are you more a hands-on person, interested less in theory and more in practice? Then you can go directly to part two, where you’ll find how to translate agile principles specifically for use in your daily work or practice. To begin with, you can determine precisely how agile your organization currently is. Then you can read how to structure your organization and processes to maximise agility. What continuously-repeating steps constitute these processes? What tools help in completing those steps and in what ways? This approach and the associated tools have been developed by combining experimental practice with existing methods and supplementing it with new solutions.

The individual chapters are explained below; a kind of navigation system when reading this book.

Topics per chapter

In Chapter 2 you learn about Darwinism. You see that every organization has to adapt to changing circumstances, otherwise it runs the very great risk of becoming extinct. Also, you will see that agile organiations are the most successful in adapting to these changes, and so perform better.

Chapter 3 looks more deeply into changing circumstances, both externally and internally. You see that more is changing, more rapidly and more deeply, and agility is required in order to create and maintain the necessary adaptability. Unfortunately, many organizations come up short due to resistance, lack of internal cooperation and fear of failure.

The idea that it is vital for agility that trying and failing is allowed and accepted, is central to Chapter 4. You learn why it is essential, as early as possible in the process, to try and fail as often as you can. You can find inspiration in wonderful examples of valuable inventions that were discovered accidentally.

In Chapter 5, you will discover that agility also makes the decisive difference in situations where winning is crucial, like warfare and elite sports, and Chapter 6 gives you the opportunity to delve deeper into the history of agile management. You will see that the approach is not a flash in the pan, but more than a hundred years in development. You can also read about the benefits and efficiency of agile management.

Chapter 7 discusses the agile management approach in detail, examining the eight principles on which the approach is based, such as value creation, alignment and empowerment. It also describes how agile management can be used for both internal and external customers. The chapter ends by looking at the importance of IT.

The practical part of this book (Part 2) begins at Chapter 8. First of all, you can do a quick self-assessment to determine how agile your own organization really is. Then it discusses where your organization should focus and what this means for leadership. Finally, there is an extensive case study of ING Bank.

The process central to agile management is explained in Chapter 9. There you will see that this includes three continuously repeating steps: Think-Do-Learn. These steps are further explored in subsequent chapters.

Chapters 10 and 11 cover the first step: Think. They go into how to best monitor changes in circumstances and how to quickly adapt your business model, both internally and externally. You learn how to make your organization more customer-focused. How to become smarter at prioritization and planning your improvements, and to make use of hypotheses and metrics.

In Chapter 12 you go on to the next step: Do. An answer to the question of how to design and build value propositions and customer experiences in a quick and practical way, in which you learn how a so-called minimum viable product works and how you can test this.

The final step, Learn, is the subject of Chapter 13. Here you learn how to analyse your efforts and the results they have delivered. You’ll become familiar with the different sources of information that you need for your analysis, what I call the voice of the customer. You also learn how to evaluate and pivot.

The last part of the book, from Chapter 14 onwards, addresses the question of how you become future-proof. It contains a summary of everything you have learned, how it all fits together and discusses how to make real the transformation from your current situation to an agile organization. In addition, you will find answers to frequently asked questions arising from real-world practice and references to inspiring resources for supportive background information.

By reading this chapter, you’ll have discovered the following:

•  You can look at organizations in different ways. One is to assess the level of agility. Agility is required for adaptivity: the extent to which organizations can adapt to changes in internal or external conditions.

•  Agile management is an approach that facilitates this for the entire organization. The approach is not just limited to IT and also includes many more aspects than just product development, for example. Agile management applies to both internal and external customers and is applicable in almost any kind of organization.

•  The book teaches you two ways to apply agile management within your organization: first, by introducing you to the theoretical background and then letting you discover how you can make it a concrete part of your organization’s business practice.

PART 1

Treasure hunt! Searching for the essence of agile management

On expedition!

In Part 1 you will discover what agile management means. I use many examples from theory and practice to discuss what agile management is and is not. This section provides answers to questions like:

•  What is adaptivity and why is it relevant to my organization?

•  Why is more and more changing, inside and outside my organization, and how can I better anticipate this?

•  Why can’t I get my organization to adapt quickly to changing circumstances?

•  What is the importance of experimentation and how should I work with failures?

•  What are the origins of agile management?

•  What are good examples of agile organizations from which I can learn?

•  What are the key principles of agile management and how does it actually work?

•  Isn’t it really only good for software developers?

•  How can I use it for my internal and external customers?

•  And why are data and information so important to agile management?

“

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

2 Adaptivity: adapt or die

Every organization – whether commercial or non-profit, start up or well-established – will, sooner or later, have to deal with changes to its internal or external circumstances. In this chapter we take a trip into nature to understand why it is so important to be able to adapt to change. You can also read about organizations that experienced major changes, with fatal consequences.

2.1 A (r)evolutionary idea from an amateur biologist

A sailing ship drops anchor in the bay of a beautiful island. A moment later its dinghy is carrying a young man to the shore. After four long and hard years, sharing a small cabin with a captain suffering from melancholy and fits of rage, he is looking forward to the prospect, once more, of heading out alone.

The young man answers to the name Charles Darwin and 26 years earlier was born in Shrewsbury, a quiet village in the West Midlands of England. His mother – who dies when Charles is eight – comes from the rich Wedgwood family, makers of the famous porcelain. His father, a prosperous physician who sees Charles as his successor, is terribly disappointed when, at the age of sixteen, he abruptly stops his medical studies because he cannot stand the sight of blood. After another failure, this time studying law, he finally sees a chance to graduate in theology at Cambridge, with a boring life in a rural parish as his future. But his great passion is biology.

When, in the spring of 1831, he gets the offer to sail on the research ship HMS Beagle, he does not have to think for long. The captain, Robert FitzRoy, is looking for a dinner companion because, in his position, he may only invite ‘gentlemen’ and his favourite companion has cancelled at the last minute. FitzRoy, an extremely strange man, chooses Darwin partly because of the shape of his nose, which, to FitzRoy, indicates a strong character. That Darwin was trained as a cleric adds to FitzRoy’s conviction. FitzRoy’s official mission is, indeed, to map the coastal waters, but his hobby is to look for evidence for the biblical interpretation of creation. On departing from Plymouth, on December 27th, 1831, he could never have suspected that this expedition would result in evidence precisely to the contrary.

It’s September 17th, 1835 when Darwin sets foot ashore in Chatham, the easternmost island of the Galapagos archipelago, about 800 kilometres off the coast of Ecuador. During the ensuing five weeks he collects from the group of islands a huge collection of specimens of the local flora and fauna, including many different types of finches. Darwin was not yet an accomplished naturalist, so a few obvious observations completely elude him at the time. Being inexperienced he also forgets to document from which islands the birds come. It will take another two years, after returning, to sort out this mess completely.

Coping

Darwin’s friend John Gould, an ornithologist, notices in 1837 that in addition to their obvious similarities the finches also have very different beaks. Together, they then determine thirteen different species, and assume that the beak of each species is adapted to the local food sources of their respective island. Their conclusion is that the birds were not created this way, but they have, in some way, changed themselves. This was probably pretty bad news for the creationist FitzRoy.

Six years after returning, Darwin finally begins to work out his new theory in a manuscript. In 1844, he lays it aside as the book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation appears. It suggests that man might well have evolved from lower primates, without help from the Divine Creator. There is a tremendous uproar and the anonymous author is cursed from the pulpits. (For that reason the author waited forty years before he dared to let his name be known; it turned out to be Robert Chambers, the largest bible publisher in the world). Darwin decided to devote himself to raising ten children and writing a rather-thick tome about barnacles (which, understandably, he later hated) that kept him busy for eight years. He also became a kind of recluse, barely able to work because he was suffering from the debilitating effects of Chagas disease, which he contracted in South America as a result of an insect bite.

A controversial theory

Darwin’s manuscript would probably have been lost if he had not received a request, in 1858, from Alfred Russell Wallace to comment on his essay. This essay bore strong similarities to Darwin’s manuscript. Darwin then decided that they had to present their theory jointly to the Linnaean Society. Wallace lost interest and, from then on, would refer to this theory as “Darwinism.”

Finally, towards the end of 1859, On the Origin of Species is published, in which Darwin presents his theory. It is an immediate commercial success, although there is much criticism in the early years about there being only limited evidence. However, in 1865, the Czech monk Gregor Mendel, published evidence of a mechanism that explained how, according to Darwin, all living things are descended from a single common source. Nevertheless, Darwin’s theory was not widely accepted until 1930. During his later life, Darwin was frequently honoured by the scientific community, but never for his evolutionary theory.¹

By the way, Darwin never used the phrase survival of the fittest, it is taken from the book Principles of Biology, written by Herbert Spender in 1864. The term evolution was first used by Darwin in 1872, in the sixth edition of his book. But what was in his first edition, is the now famous phrase:

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.

This phrase summarizes very strongly what Darwin understood. That the animal kingdom is all about one thing: adaptivity. According to him, the ability of species to adapt to (changing) circumstances is the most important condition to survive natural selection.

You will probably wonder what this trip to the wonderful world of flora and fauna has to do with your organization? More than you think. Let’s go on an expedition into the world of organizations and find out.

2.2 From organisms to organizations: the extinction of technology companies

What is the brand of your current mobile phone? The probability is now very small that it is a Nokia. But have you ever had a Nokia phone in the past? Probably the answer is affirmative. Strange, is it not? You’ll soon see what is the logical explanation for this.

Many, including perhaps yourself, seem inclined to think that the biggest companies will always win, meaning that well-known brand names would exist forever. But if you look at the stock market listings on Wall Street over the past fifty years, you’ll make a surprising discovery. What do titans like Kodak, Polaroid, Chrysler, GM, Saab, Rover, Pan Am, RCA, Compaq, Atari, MGM and Texaco have in common? They needed state aid, or had to be taken over, have been decimated, were consigned to the margins or have gone bankrupt. Let’s look at a few of these examples.

Eastman Kodak

Founded in 1888 by George Eastman, Kodak hits its peak about a century later. The company then had over 145,000 employees worldwide, generating more than $16 billion in annual sales and was valued at approximately $30 billion. It is so ubiquitous that even its slogan is found in most dictionaries: a Kodak moment. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, used Kodak film when he made his famous recordings. More than eighty films that have won an Oscar for best film were made with Kodak film. Kodak was a stock market icon on Wall Street, an example of the American Dream. But then two things happened. First, Fuji entered the US market and brought a smart marketing approach that rapidly grew their market share to 17%. Second, Kodak decided to hold fire on digital photography (Kodak had already invented the first digital camera in 1975 and registered 1,100 patents, but chose not to put the camera into production because it would harm its film business). Only at the beginning of the new millennium, as film revenues collapsed, was it given any priority. For several years Kodak then benefitted, thanks to aggressive marketing, from the rapid and profitable growth in sales of digital cameras.

But the company does not anticipate that these cameras will quickly become commodities, or that this, together with the arrival of newcomers from Asia, will force prices down, creating negative margins for Kodak. Market share falls from 27% to 7% and the losses build up fast. In 2012 the company files for bankruptcy, making a $1.3 billion dollar loss on annual revenues of $4.1 billion. After selling almost all its patents Kodak is now trying to survive as a supplier of printing products in the enterprise market. As Steve Ballamy put it in 2015: “We were a bankrupt company three years ago, and now we’re kind of a start-up. But we’re like the most mature start-up in the history of business.” Current market capitalization hovers around $660 million, around 2% of its peak value. Let’s just hope that your pension fund has not invested in Kodak.

Nokia and others

Or take another giant, Nokia. It was founded in 1865 to make rubber overshoes. Around 1980 they decided to deploy a bold diversification strategy by focussing on a new product in the emerging market of mobile phones. This makes the company extremely successful. Between 1998 and 2012, Nokia is the world leader in this market, selling, in 2005, its billionth phone. At its height, Nokia has sales of $37 billion, employs 132,000 workers and has a market capitalization of $251 billion.

Although rumours are rife in 2002, it’s not until January 2007 that Nokia has its deus ex machine moment: the totally unexpected introduction by Apple of the iPhone (see Figure 2.1). Samsung responds almost immediately with its F700. Nokia’s leadership sees this as a disruptive innovation because they think they are way ahead in the field of hardware and software (Nokia even already have a successful smartphone, the Communicator, but not one with a touchscreen and apps). Grown lethargic and cumbersome via many years of success, Nokia’s time-to-market for innovations from the R&D labs is much too long. Due to conservative internal forces, the company is not sufficiently open to change. When a member of the Board of Directors takes the new iPhone home one evening, his four-year daughter begins immediately to play with it. When, after a while, she asks him if she can put the ‘magic’ phone under her pillow, he realizes that his company has a huge problem.²

Figure 2.1 The market capitalization of Nokia and its direct competitors: after the collapse of the ‘Internet bubble’ in 2000, the demise of Nokia becomes final in 2007; Sony is also struggling despite the success of its PlayStation (source: Thomson Reuters Datastream)

Towards the end of 2008, Nokia finally introduces its first touchscreen phone, the 5800 XpressMusic. However, this just does not function well. Moreover, Apple and Google have been a lot smarter than Nokia, working with app developers. Mobile-app programming is easier, apps offer increased revenues and both offer a central download store (App Store and Android Market). Until 2010, Nokia’s smartphone sales continue to grow, but the overall market is growing many times faster. Despite hefty price cuts, sales collapse. Although the company still sells a lot of classical phones, intense competition and the associated price erosion of 60% eat too much of its margin. In 2013, Nokia is technically bankrupt and is forced to sell its Mobile Division and related patents to Microsoft for only $7.4 billion (who then decided to totally discontinue the Nokia brand in November 2016). The crown jewels for a pittance, because Nokia simply did not have the necessary resilience. And probably no one at Nokia was rejoicing at the prospect of making rubber wellys again.

Research In Motion, the manufacturer of BlackBerry, had a similar experience. This company trusted blindly that its large installed base, its own network and its superior security capabilities would allow it to continue to dominate the market. As a result, Research In Motion was too slow in adapting to changes in the market and its market share fell, between 2010 and 2016, from 41% to 1%. Its market capitalization is now about one-twentieth of at its peak.