major features of the dinosaurs

speaking of corporate dinosaurs, lets describe them first.

• they are tremendously sustainable: i might be subjective here, but at least more than 50 years on the market proves the ability to produce products and services that are bringing value to users, also having high lifetime value
• they bring constant value to stakeholders: being a blue chip company, in S&P 500, having constant revenues and paying stable dividends over time, being able to sustain itself, managing finances and balancing the revenues and expenses including investment into innovation and growth
• they make a difference for society: winning product or process awards, innovation prices, best place to work and having any other industry relevant achievements, as well as corporate responsibility (example — a double project of Danone)
• they have distinct corporate culture. probably most difficult to measure and not enough researched, but when once thinks of any certain corporate dinosaur, a certain “image” of the employee would definitely come into mind. Culture , like glue, keeps employees together and defines the way the customers and stakeholders are treated and how the company manages its way through its lifetime.

How many are out there? At least 11 on the US market, according to research of Jim Collins and team from the book (https://www.amazon.de/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996) but of course, if we take global scale, there are much more of those. Moreover, the criteria of choice can be less strict, so that we have more options to analyse further and not so evident best practices.

To sum it up, there are enough great examples of real corporate dinosaurs out there, whereas mostly this phrase would come with a bit of a negative connotation.

At least once i week i find myself reading yet another article saying why old fashioned leadership style and siloed processes are keeping companies away from being innovative, and then offering another canvas to empower innovative mindset and come up with a breakthrough. Coaches and mentors come up with yet another fancy naming for a project management framework and earn their fortune of certifications yet to say that its not the framework, but the corporate incapability to change that failed. Frustration in the management rises and words like agile, scrum, sprints even get forbidden by labour unions (true story).

Unfortunately much less articles focus on long term and sustainable development in the times of uncertainty. And way less show the actual way on how the corporate dinosaurs keep surfing the waves on uncertainly and keep their numbers high, stakeholders happy and users…well, if they weren't satisfied, would the companies still be able to keep those numbers?

Looking at this dilemma since 2010, i decided to dedicate some time to research it and this is what #howtodinosaur is going to be about.

• Why are corporate dinosaurs where they are after so many years? (and why Kodak and co didn’t make it)
• What are corporate dinosaurs exactly? Is it just a matter of time until they stop existing vs startups survive only on hype and investor money?
• What are best practices we can learn from them, instead of reinventing the wheel every time something fancy comes into the stage light?

P.S. Research will be published along the new insights are won, so corrections and deeper evaluations will come at regular times, backed by data or qualitative methods, where available.

Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash