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Sears had it the easiest. They already had all the logistics and delivery operations in place. All they had to update was one thing: their ordering process. The

Sears had it the easiest. They already had all the logistics and delivery operations in place. All they had to update was one thing: their ordering process. They've could have started by placing the catalog online and having you call to order (maybe they did this?), then you move to online ordering, then you went full e-tailer and removed the catalog. The only thing that changed from traditional retail giant to e-tailer was the ordering process. Sears was uniquely positioned for the future and they squandered their opportunity.

turk73 7y ago
It's the same reason Swiss watches never went electronic and the Japanese snatched the market away. It's just not how business works because management gets fixed on dumb bureaucratic things and fails to innovate. MBA folks aren't that good at business the same way English majors aren't that good at writing novels.
jrumbut 7y ago
I know almost no one does this, but I find it so strange given what we know about domain knowledge that it wasn't the natural solution to teach a bunch of the catalog staff PHP and make them the foundation of the ecommerce staff. You had people in there with 3-30+ years experience of knowing the ins and outs of Sears logistics, the product lines, the sales techniques, and the brand. They couldn't learn how to work a Wordpress site? Make a theme? Is it really always faster to take web devs and teach the entire rest of the domain to them? I wonder what it would do to the inertia and political gamesmanship issues (not to mention retention!) if a company gained the reputation for continuously training employees and executives to keep up with the latest and greatest, that if you were innovative and took initiative you would be ahead of outside hires for new, desirable roles.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  It’s hard to underestimate the inertia in these places. I’ve had a couple of employers that became victims of a changing market. Everybody knew we had to change but nothing happened. The funny thing is after the businesses failed many of us ended up doing what we should have done before.

turk73 7y ago

It's the same reason Swiss watches never went electronic and the Japanese snatched the market away. It's just not how business works because management gets fixed on dumb bureaucratic things and fails to innovate. MBA folks aren't that good at business the same way English majors aren't that good at writing novels.

jrumbut 7y ago

I know almost no one does this, but I find it so strange given what we know about domain knowledge that it wasn't the natural solution to teach a bunch of the catalog staff PHP and make them the foundation of the ecommerce staff. You had people in there with 3-30+ years experience of knowing the ins and outs of Sears logistics, the product lines, the sales techniques, and the brand. They couldn't learn how to work a Wordpress site? Make a theme? Is it really always faster to take web devs and teach the entire rest of the domain to them? I wonder what it would do to the inertia and political gamesmanship issues (not to mention retention!) if a company gained the reputation for continuously training employees and executives to keep up with the latest and greatest, that if you were innovative and took initiative you would be ahead of outside hires for new, desirable roles.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
It’s hard to underestimate the inertia in these places. I’ve had a couple of employers that became victims of a changing market. Everybody knew we had to change but nothing happened. The funny thing is after the businesses failed many of us ended up doing what we should have done before.