Being agile in a business sense is very important - look at what's happening in music. The move from physical media to digital downloads - and the consequent move to lower/no cost music - has been obvious for quite some time. The management ranks of the music labels have spent years fighting it, when they should have been using their reserves of cash to pivot over to a new model. Now - probably too late - they finally seem to understand what's going on:

Record companies face such hostile conditions that their backers, whether private equity or corporations, are loth to spend the sums required to move into the bits of the music industry that are thriving, such as touring and merchandising. The majors are trying to strike “360-degree” deals with artists that grant them a share of these earnings. But even if artists agree to such deals, they will not hand over new rights unless they get better terms on recorded music, so the majors may not see much benefit overall. Tim Renner, a former boss of Universal Music in Germany, says the majors should have acted years ago. “Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies,” he says. Now it may be too late.

Now that conditions are well along the change curve, they can't afford the requisite moves. THis is hardly unique to music companies - between open source and ubiquitous broadband, the selling environment for lots of things is changing dramatically. The important thing is to get out in front of the wave.

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