Hi, guys. Welcome back to Entrepreneurial Strategic Management. This is module six and we continue to try to understand in this module, which will be the final module of this course. What it is that companies need to do and other organizations in order to succeed over the long-term? How do they survive? How do they make money? Why do some company's fail? And if you recall in module five, we began to look at a model or a frame work that tries to make predictions about the future that company's or entrepreneur's can use when making decisions about strategies, about new products and ways to help them survive. This is much different from what we've looked at in the past in this course, which has been more retrospective or looking at the past to try to understand success. If you recall, we called this approach a disruption and it's a framework that has been developed by Dr. Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School. And he's written a number of books that we recommended to you about disruption. And we looked at two specific cases, we talked through a case about Netflix. And how Netflix acts as a disruptor to different companies in media industries, such as Blockbuster and cable and satellite providers. And we also looked at the case of the mini mill steel providers and how they disrupted traditional steel production in the past. We're going to continue with this approach over this module, because it's a very fascinating and important under a look at strategy that can really help companies and managers in my observation. And so we're going to pick it right back up with our model, our disruption and sustaining innovation approach. Please recall that we're not talking about technology. Companies with this approach, although we may use examples of companies that include technology in their product offering. This model is meant to apply to all areas of business and we'll emphasize some points that try to Illustrate further how this approach really isn't about technology. But let's look at this model here or this application of this model to technology that was developed in the 1940s and 1950s that allowed many new products to emerge. And what we're going to talk about is transistor technology. Lets go back even further than the 1940s and 50s to talk about transistors. And by no means, am I an electrical engineer or have a deep understanding of the technologies themselves. I'm going to focus on the companies behind the technologies or the products that the companies produced. Before the 1940s or 50s, the only technology that existed to reproduce sound and film involved the use of vacuum tubes. And if you recall in the early 1900s, radio technology became very important. Many people purchased radios for their homes and content began to be distributed, sound content or audio content over radio airwaves. And it has really been an important part of the evolution of telecommunications technology over the last century or so. Then televisions were developed, they also used vacuum tubes. And without spending any time discussing them, I would like to emphasize with you that vacuum tubes allowed radios and TVs to communicate information, knowledge, content, whether it be through audio or video or both. So, it was very powerful. It created whole new industries, entire new companies, created tons of employment opportunities. And so vacuum tubes really were disruptive to the past, because of this creation of entire new industries. And what they did is they allowed people who previously weren't able to consume video or audio to do so in their homes previous to the existence of vacuum tube technology. If you wanted to listen to some type of live performance or recorded performance, which really wasn't widely available. You probably went to an actual live performance in a theater and the performance was limited to the number of people that could fit into the space. And so the reason I mention that is because vacuum tubes allowed people who were previous non-consumers of audio or visual media productions, entertainment productions to consume them. And that's one sign that you should look for when you hear about a new technology or a new product or a new industry, is it bringing in non-consumers? Is it bringing in people who previously did not have access to a product or service? And so that is what we are going to use as a basis for two cases today. This case on vacuum tubes and subsequent technology on transistors and then we are going to look at a non-technology example called the University of Phoenix, as our second case. And the focus will be on this idea of non-consumption and being underserved by a product or service category.
