Is Everything Up to Date in Kansas City?

In the musical “Oklahoma” a guy went to Kansas City and declared that
everything’s up-to-date there. “They’ve gone as fer as they can go,” he sang. “I
counted twenty gas buggies goin’ by themselves--- when I put my eye into a bell
telephone, a strange woman started into talk---You can turn the radiator on
whenever you want some heat..What next? What next?”

So, have we “gone as fer as we can go? Should we close the patent office because
everything has been invented?

Fast forward a hundred years from 1909. A Wharton School nationwide survey
says that the most innovative advances in just the past thirty years are---no
surprises----


The internet
PCs and Laptops
Cell phones
Email

It’s hard to imagine that communication and information can go much farther. It
seems to me that we are nearly to a point where--

All information is available everywhere,
right now,
free,
and everybody is connected!

Maybe we’ll have chips implanted at birth that will think for you and enable you to
transmit your thoughts without talking or writing. And the symphony hall will
reside in your inner ear.

Progress doesn’t ratchet back. It’s different than trends, where most of them fall
and reverse through their own weight. We’ll never go back to no cell phones; they’ll
be replaced with something better. Technological progress will be incremental, until
a great new invention will shatter the status quo.

By 2039 we’ll look back on 2009 as a dark, barely literate year. Cancer may be
cured, energy solved with nuclear fusion, poverty gone. Maybe, I hope, we’ll finally
be out of debt and enjoying the cool of the evening, wondering what climate change
was all about.

Back to Kansas City. What innovative changes can small businesses do to survive
the recession of 2009 (plus?) so their heirs will have the chance to be rich and proud
in 2039?

Here’s a starter list:
Assume survival, rather than slow death.
Concentrate on the essence of your brand, not the add-ons.
Advertise loudly and wisely.
Nourish relationships, one at a time.
Pick and groom your successor.
Watch your market change, then change faster.

The visitor in the musical found that
“They went an’ built a sky scraper seven stories tall
About as high as a building orta grow.
Everything’s like a dream in Kansas City
It’s better than a magic lantern show.”

Change happens. Recessions happen. If you want, good times and a magic lantern
are about to happen. Who knows? Kansas City may lead the way.