There is an NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) process that encourages the act of visioning. This imaginary exercise requires the subject to place themselves into a future state (point in time) without the encumbrances of the present. Encumbrances of the present limit the vision of the future and prevent the creative imagination to guide real, substantive change. Difficult to see down the road while looking at the bug on the windshield.

• ToysRUs
• Radio Shack
• Sports Authority

It is likely these companies saw the advance of technology and understood the implications to the survival of their business model. Yet, in spite of feeble efforts to adopt technology initiatives, worse yet, failing to understand the significance to their business model, these companies failed. Survival is optional.

An emerging characteristic of those companies who successfully adapt, is the abandonment of legacy thinking. I always thought it curious that Uber seldom considered how to comply with local taxi authorities and focused on a business model that in large part ignored those restrictions. I watched and chuckled as Uber was forbidden to serve a market because they refused to comply, only to watch municipal magistrates eventually remove those restrictions in the face of market demand.

One would think that a local taxi company would examine and copy Uber’s technology to compete head to head. It was certainly available to them. What stopped the effective adoption of technology had nothing to do with the technology.

What stopped the effective adoption of technology was the sacrosanct immovability of the legacy thinking. A legacy taxi company cannot imagine a world where they own no vehicles. A hotelier cannot imagine a world where they own no physical hotel properties.