A century after it descended to the bottom of the Atlantic, the Titanic is being served up fresh the world over — in a 3D re-release of the Oscar-winning movie by that name, in restaurant menus from Hong Kong to New York, in exhibitions and recreated voyages. It’s hard to find another modern-day tragedy with such enduring appeal. The reason is simple enough — the Titanic offers lessons that resonate in everyday business and life. Here are some relevant ones.
Be nimble, not just big, to stay ahead of competition. In 1912, Titanic’s owner, White Star Liner, was losing business to rival Cunard that held the record for the fastest liners of the day, the Lusitania and the Mauretania. It was to recapture sliding market share that the Titanic was launched amid much fanfare as the world’s biggest liner at 852 feet in length. In the process, the builders of the ship failed to ask the simple question — will a ship that size be nimble? The Titanic couldn’t manoeuvre fast enough to avoid the iceberg or even steer clear away from it, leading to a rapid plunge into its watery grave. Businesses that fail to keep pace often sink fast, even though they may have been the largest. This week, electronics giant Sony, that invented the personal stereo, announced record losses after being outmoded by Apple and Samsung as it failed to woo consumers with relevant cutting-edge products.
Nothing is too big or too grand to fail. The Titanic, built at a whopping cost of $ 7.5 million a hundred years ago, was considered too big to sink. The floating wonder, however, went down in less than three hours on April 15, 1912 as water broke through its hull. Modern day banking behemoth Lehman, too powerful to ever go down, sank on Sept 15, 2008, when it filed for bankruptcy protection after it failed to secure buyers to bail it out given its staggering liabilities. After Lehman’s collapse, employees used eBay to sell memorabilia from caps to coffee mugs, the only things they could salvage, in much the same way that some Titanic’s memorabilia has been auctioned.
When disaster strikes, it takes everyone in its wake — not even first class is spared. When the Titanic sank, it ended the lives of more than 1,500 passengers. Only some 700 survived, and in the mayhem, it didn’t matter whether you were a first class passenger or plebeian. The current economic turmoil in the European Union, is playing out in much the same way. While it may have started out with the poorly managed economies, it’s ensuring a bout of recession for the EU this year, the feeble economic growth attempted by Germany and France notwithstanding. And it’s hard to tell which countries will join the growing ranks of the nine EU countries that have already slipped into negative territory.
Governments often assist in failure by overlooking regulation. The Titanic was a ship that weighted nearly 47,000 tonnes, whereas the UK government’s Board of Trade Regulations applied safety standards meant for standard 10,000 tonne ships, which needed only 16 lifeboats to set sail. The Titanic therefore got afloat with fewer lifeboats than needed. The result was an unprecedented loss of lives at sea. The US sub-prime crisis that pushed the world into the most dramatic economic turmoil since World War II came about because regulators failed to monitor newly fangled financial products and impose tighter regulation on them. Still, unlike the Titanic, whose damage could be assessed within days of its sinking, more than four years after the financial crisis was unleashed, we’re swimming in dark waters.
Anjana Menon is a Delhi-based business writer. You can send your comments to bsshoptalk@gmail.com