The news that Amazon is readying a major roll out of its online grocery business will catch many grocers unprepared.
This despite the fact that Peapod has been perfecting its model since 1989, reaching sales $500 million last year, there are an estimated 1600 online competitors, and Wal Mart decided the category was large enough to enter in 2011. And Amazon's initiative has been five years in the making.
Many will justify their lack of action because, at $6 billion, the category is just over 1% of the $550 billion food market in the US. It's just not big enough, yet, they'll say.
And one morning, they'll wake up, "surprised" at how big the category has become and try to mount an effective response.
It will be too late.
What did they do wrong?
Surprise rarely occurs because of lack of signals; it's due to either misreading indicators or when an organization's view of the environment, conditioned by past perceptions, prevents it from correctly seeking or interpreting indicators or emerging trends.
Take Pearl Harbor - why did the US navy fail to detect anytime in advance the movement of the most powerful fleet in history? It was not as if Japan's blue water fleet was a surprise - in 1905 it destroyed the Russian Pacific fleet; nor were Japan's expansionist intentions a secret - it invaded Manchuria in 1931. Given this, "intelligence officers could perhaps have foreseen the attack if the US, years before, had...flown regular aerial reconnaissance of the the Japanese navy, put intercept units aboard ships sailing close to Japan...or recruited a network of marine observers to report on ship movements." [Kahn, "The Intelligence Failure of Pearl Harbor," Foreign affairs, 70, no. 5 (Winter 1991/1992)]
In other words, you can't find what you're not looking for. Said another way, we create our own surprises.
What "surprises" await your organization?
This despite the fact that Peapod has been perfecting its model since 1989, reaching sales $500 million last year, there are an estimated 1600 online competitors, and Wal Mart decided the category was large enough to enter in 2011. And Amazon's initiative has been five years in the making.
Many will justify their lack of action because, at $6 billion, the category is just over 1% of the $550 billion food market in the US. It's just not big enough, yet, they'll say.
And one morning, they'll wake up, "surprised" at how big the category has become and try to mount an effective response.
It will be too late.
What did they do wrong?
Surprise rarely occurs because of lack of signals; it's due to either misreading indicators or when an organization's view of the environment, conditioned by past perceptions, prevents it from correctly seeking or interpreting indicators or emerging trends.
Take Pearl Harbor - why did the US navy fail to detect anytime in advance the movement of the most powerful fleet in history? It was not as if Japan's blue water fleet was a surprise - in 1905 it destroyed the Russian Pacific fleet; nor were Japan's expansionist intentions a secret - it invaded Manchuria in 1931. Given this, "intelligence officers could perhaps have foreseen the attack if the US, years before, had...flown regular aerial reconnaissance of the the Japanese navy, put intercept units aboard ships sailing close to Japan...or recruited a network of marine observers to report on ship movements." [Kahn, "The Intelligence Failure of Pearl Harbor," Foreign affairs, 70, no. 5 (Winter 1991/1992)]
In other words, you can't find what you're not looking for. Said another way, we create our own surprises.
What "surprises" await your organization?
