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Building Our Future: Part 1
June 16, 2008
Those of you who read my blogs, articles and What’s Next bulletins know that I have a strong interest in what the future is going to look like. Not just the immediate future but the future that will play out in five or ten years.
For that reason, it has long been my concern that we in the toy industry have held on to the past far too tightly. By looking backwards, we have failed to anticipate what was coming: That China and children would eventually outgrow us; that the longer and more remote the supply chain the more likely would be the chances for safety breakdowns; and that electronic gaming would consume more and more of children’s attention and our dollars.
Not only did we fail to anticipate these problems but we treated them like global warming; something that was big, vague, potentially catastrophic and beyond our control. As in the case with “age compression” we just threw our hands in the air and accepted the losses. Neither we as individuals, companies nor institutions truly studied these issues, made predictions, calculated the potential outcomes and proposed actions.
We as an industry can stop reacting and begin acting by considering what is coming down the road in five to ten years. That will be in my next blog.
*The construction worker image used in this blog was found at Minifigs
Posted by Richard Gottlieb on June 16, 2008 | Comments (0)
