News: Fujifilm Holdings acquires Xerox

Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings is set to take over Xerox Corp in a $6.1 billion deal, combining the U.S. company into their existing joint venture to gain scale and cut costs amid declining demand for office printing.

It's often difficult to remember companies who were massive one day and gone the next. Blockbuster, Borders, Kodak, now Xerox. These are companies whose names defined a category. The reasons for the failure of giants are always complex—even though we often look for a simple explanation.

Is it complacency? Is it a lack of focus? Failure to innovate?

Is it top-down opinion instead of outside-in facts? Is it hubris? Is it the Innovator's Dilemma? 

One simple metric is to consider how much revenue is produced by products that were introduced less than five years ago. 

When was your last new product success?  

Many product management and marketing teams are fully consumed with growing the revenues for existing products. Would you say your team is innovating? Where are your new products? What's on Horizon-2 and -3?  You need to devote a few folks to product strategy, not just product optimization.

Innovation is the source of future revenue growth but we're often so busy with short-term execution that we ignore long-term strategy.