Every time there is a shift in the market, there is a rush to be the first to proclaim that the “sky is falling.” In the real estate business, one only needs to look at the investors running around screaming about the “death of retail” to see that it’s happening again.
Right now, online business accounts for 2.5 percent of the United States GDP. That sounds like a significant number until you look at the mail order business, which accounted for more than 5 percent of the GDP just a century ago.
Every new startup in Silicon Valley talks about how it will disrupt the market as though disruptions were only invented in the past decade. They weren’t. Although Sears and Montgomery Ward began as mail order companies in the late 1800s, by 1930 they had stores across the country. Despite the massive success of their mail order sales business, people still love the customer experience.
According to Chaim Katzman, every big trend initially seems to change the world, and we often call it a disruption. Eventually, it slows down or disappears altogether. It becomes a part of the human experience, but things tend to return to equilibrium. A catalog can no more replace the shopping experience than a webpage. There is something that we love about going out of our homes and into a social environment to shop.
When VHS ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
