Start spotting the biggest threat to your business

Here’s something interesting about human perception. Quite a few people may know the first video, fewer will recognise the second. It’s worth a try to see how what you observe is not always what it seems to be. Please read my comments once you’ve watched the videos:

Video 1:

Video 2:

Now that you’ve determined how sharp your observation qualities are it’s worth considering how this applies to business, and in particular the business of stock photography. With so much continuous change it’s difficult enough to keep track of all the moving elements within our immediate environment; things like: Reducing revenues, late payments and declining prices. It’s even more difficult to keep track of those a little bit further out like: New competitors, user generated content, photography sharing sites and changes at clients. Another step further are changes like: New business and pricing  models, free content, innovative technology.

While watching all of those for most of the time and try to adapt to change is an industry missing the ‘Gorilla in the room’?   Are there one or more developments that are shaking the foundations of a business model even more so than all the things we are trying to watch?

Here are a few potential Gorilla’s:

• Google or any other search engine that starts to ‘get it’ and invests in the last bits that make their search engine better with monetization options at the back-end (Picscout)
• A free photography platform (Everystockphoto?) that finds a new way to monetize photography
• A hot new silicon valley start-up with big investment backers that takes a new approach
• A new generation of clients that is not keen on possessing digital assets and will not pay any price
• Demand Media or another ‘content mill’ moving from video to stills and using an army of contributors to generate millions of images.

These are a few examples but in an area that changes so rapidly on the back of technology innovation and changes in attitudes anything could happen and it will be interesting, even essential to open the debate about the gorillas in the stock photography world