From Hindsight to Foresight

We rely upon creators to drive society forward. New art. Fresh ideas. Groundbreaking innovations. We associate this type of work with forward-looking visionaries, but it helps to be grounded in history. When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, it completely upended the music industry. While the device marked a new strategy for the company, they could look at other music tech developments to understand how it would play out. After the massive financial success of CDs, the music industry was facing a disruptive transformation with the introduction of digital music files. Much the same way that the walkman worked in tandem with cassettes, Apple placed their bet on the iPod coinciding with the rise of digital music sales. The bet paid off and the company soon became the epicenter of global music sales. Historical data gave Apple the hindsight they need to hone their foresight into the future of music. As Steve Jobs once stated, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.” 

But sometimes, the weight of history can bog down the innovation process. Incumbents become overly reliant on the business models or approaches that have brought them success. They make assumptions that relevant changes will happen incrementally, with ample opportunity to adjust. One of the biggest fallacies that people and organizations make is assuming that the future will be just like today, just with new devices or technologies. Many people fail to anticipate wide-scale change in their way of life or doing business. So when inflection points in the market arrive, laggards take their implications for granted. When we become overly reliant on history or the way things used to be, we can get trapped in bygone eras. The stories we tell ourselves every day, like the timelessness of a business model or the durability of an ideology, can become barriers to change. This is especially true if we don’t learn to question our assumptions.

Despite these potential challenges, history doesn’t have to be a set of shackles that binds us to the past. Indeed it can be a forum for exploration and iteration. “History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought,” according to French philosopher, Etienne Gilson. And one of the best frameworks to help make sense of those historical tests is the Janus Cones. It is a visual strategy tool that helps users look back in time to identify the timing of historical events and how that timing affects potential future events. The tool consists of two consists. The point of intersection between those cones represents the present. The left opening cone represents the past, where users can list historical events or important developments related to the topic they are exploring. The more detailed this component of the exercise is, the easier it is for users to uncover useful patterns. The right opening cone represents the future, where users can ideate about potential outcomes related to their topic of choice. One rule of thumb for this tool is to look back into the past twice as far as you are attempting to look into the future. So a an exercise exploring the future of music over the next decade should also take into account the past 20 years of developments in the industry. Filling out a Janus Cones chart is best done as a group exercise. Doing so provides diverse perspectives that help expand the range of possibilities for preferable futures. This tool brings to light how multiple events converge throughout history and helps identify the patterns that might persist into the future.

So what lessons can today’s creators learn from the history of music? The first lesson is that ownership is critical. Musicians have seen their art distributed to fans via vinyl records, cassette tapes, compact discs, digital downloads, and now streaming platforms. Despite these changes, the path to profitability has always been to maintain ownership of intellectual property and leverage it in as many ways as possible. Even as revenue from streaming starts to decline, the artists that continue to thrive are the ones licensing their owned intellectual property in new ways to meet fans where they are. The second lesson from the history of music is the importance of renewal curves. All products or businesses eventually face decline. But that timeframe for decline can be extended by introducing new opportunities for growth at the right time. When innovation is introduced before previous business models fail, organizations can take advantage of resources and momentum to drive their new ideas forward. For individual creators, this could apply to exploring new art forms or taking stylistic risks that keep fans engaged. The third lesson that the music industry has provided is that no product, business, or industry is too big to fail. Record profits and cultural relevance filled the music industry with hubris in the late 90s. The launch of file-sharing website, Napster, upended well-established and profitable business models in a shift that the music industry never recovered from. By the time the music industry tried adapting to digital media models, consumer behavior had already changed. The COVID-19 pandemic similarly reshaped the business models of the music industry. Almost overnight, concert revenue was eliminated. Live music companies remain major players in the industry, but would be wise to consider how they might introduce innovations to avoid the disruptions that have been similarly experienced by the industry in the past.

Sci-fi author and filmmaker, Michael Crichton received an MD from Harvard Medical School, but was also a student of history. He once stated; “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” Using Janus Cones can help you root yourself to the wisdom of the past, while preparing an ever changing future. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme. And the patterns of that poetry are the blueprint for successfully navigating what’s next.