Lessons about change learned after 10 years of Amazon's Kindle
This past week my various social media feeds have been promoting 10 year anniversary deals for the Kindle. It got me thinking about change, the future, and our human propensity to fear the worst. The story of the Kindle certainly has some lessons in it.
When Amazon released it's first Kindle in November 2007, Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying "books are the last bastion of analog". The first Kindle sold out within hours, was dubbed "the iPod of reading", and ignited the fear that digital books were to be the death of books and bookstores everywhere. If you read the headlines at the time, traditional publishing ran scared and books were to go the way of CDs.
With the benefit of hindsight, what has really happened since the first Kindle.
2007: Amazon's first Kindle a sell out
2011: e-books outsold paper books
2016: print book sales continue to increase
So, did the introduction of e-books and the Kindle kill the traditional book. NO WAY. Quite the opposite. Although it wasn't without change and there has been major disruption to print book publishing, brick and mortar book stores and the entire physical distribution system for books. Despite this, there are more books published today than every before (although admittedly, many fall short of being seen as a good book) and we are seeing neuroscience research confirm that reading and writing things on paper are much better for our comprehension and retention.
Almost every day I find myself having a conversation with a client, or a friend, about how the future of work is changing. How their businesses are going to remain competitive in this new order. How jobs are going to be eradicated by automation or AI. How the future for our children is less certain. Many of these conversations are underpinned by worry or fear. My reflections on the story of Amazon's Kindle highlighted the following lessons. You can see these on the following slideshare presentation which I've adapted from a recent client workshop.