Industry Magazine Commercial Kitchen Spring 2016 | Page 11

“INDUSTRIES OPERATING UNDER THEIR
CURRENT MODELS WILL HAVE TO EITHER ADAPT
TO THESE NEW TECHNOLOGIES OR PERISH”
are unable to regulate them to the level
that, perhaps, they need to. Traditional
taxi companies hate this and have begun
protesting.
• Uber does not require different
contact information for different
locales. The same app will get you a
driver in Los Angeles, New York, or right
around the corner from your house.
This means one company will have you
covered anywhere.
• Taxis have to adhere to regulations.
They have to pay for permits. Uber, like
it or not, removes bureaucracy from the
equation. You click the app and you get
a driver. For drivers, they sign up and
go through a background check and are
good to go.
Note the response that the traditional
taxi companies have had to many of these
problems. Is it to improve their own service?
Develop a mobile app their own customers
can use? No. It has been to declare that
Uber is “unfair” and that the old ways need
to stay. This has, of course, never worked.

SPRING 2016

Entire business courses are taught on
this type of market disruption and, every
single time, the solution has been to either
adapt or shutter the doors. Complaining
and turning to the government for help is
not the right solution.
Any industry, in truth, could experience
this. It is impossible to know which one
might see it next, but it could happen
anywhere and at any time. There is no
shortage of industrious entrepreneurs
out there with an Internet connection and
all the new technology they could need to
change the world. The really perplexing
part is, industries often don’t know they
need shaking up. People don’t know they
want something different until they
experience it. As Henry Ford once said, “If
I had asked people what they wanted, they

would have said faster horses.”
Uber is doing what hundreds of other
companies have done since the beginning
of business. They created a product as a
result of demand using new technology
that disrupted the old ways of doing
things. Much like record companies having
to accept digital music options, and
camera companies having to deal with the
existence of high quality camera-phones,
taxi companies are now experiencing the
same disruption. It would pay to think
about new advances in the industry you
are in as well. Is someone waiting in the
wings to throw a wrench into the way you
typically do business? If so, what are you
planning to do in response?

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