This is at once a brilliant and useless post. The brilliance is that of course you should provide something that people need that is risk averse, and using the analogy of making tires during the transitional period of wagon to automobile works well. The uselessness is both that everyone cannot make tires, literally or figuratively, and it is very difficult to know what the modern day "tire" is. Is it long lasting, high output energy source? Is it an internet-independent lifestyle-enhancer? Does it make me more energetic without unwanted side-effects or risk to my long-term health?
Nokia started out as a tyre manufacturer:<p><a href="http://www.nokiantyres.com/history-in-brief" rel="nofollow">http://www.nokiantyres.com/history-in-brief</a><p>1898 The Finnish Rubber Works is founded<p>1904 Factory set up in the town of Nokia<p>1967 Nokia Corporation established - Rubber, Cable and Paper Divisions<p>2003 Nokia's ownership in Nokian Tyres ended; Bridgestone Europe NV/SA became the largest shareholder
The article is incorrect in stating that "But actually, of all the automotive entrepreneurs of the turn of the century, only Ford and Mercedes survived"<p>Off the top of my head automotive companies that were around at the turn of the century and are still around:
Peugeot, Renault, Fiat, MAN and Opel
(the latter two are owned by other companies now)
Correction: Levi Strauss was one person, not two.<p>I do like orthogonal thinking, and a lot of businesses don't "get" the concept.<p>My former employer flailed about trying to adapt to Amazon's competitiveness (and anti-competitiveness in some cases) in both the print on demand and eBook market. They kept trying to do with Amazon does (deep discounts, free shipping) and failing to show an improvement on the bottom line.<p>They could have made a common eBook format that publishes to every platform and done well with it. eBooks tend to be nearly pure profit as opposed to the overhead of dealing with printing and shipping physical product.