In the early 1980s, the world witnessed an unusual phenomenon that would forever change the music and technology industries. It all began with the release of Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller” in November 1982. The song was a global hit.
However, it wasn’t just the song that took the world by storm; it was also the music video for the song, which also became a hit due to its entertainment value and production quality.
The “Thriller” video featured elaborate special effects, state-of-the-art makeup, and meticulously choreographed dance sequences. Basically, it had the production quality of a high budget movie, and as a result it quickly gained attention and was widely broadcasted on television, reaching audiences around the world.
Around the same time, the VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) industry was in its infancy. VCRs were becoming more affordable and accessible to consumers. But sales were very slow.
But the timing was perfect. As “Thriller” gained immense popularity, many people wanted to own a copy of the music video. This led to a massive boost in sales of the Thriller video in VHS (Video Home System) format tapes, and as a result millions of VCR’s were sold.
To further promote the song and the music video, a documentary titled “The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller” was released. This was a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the music video, and itself was a huge hit, and naturally generated even more interest in owning a VCR to watch it – leading to even more sales.
It was a strange phenomenon. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” had not only become a cultural milestone but had also played a pivotal role in the growth of the VCR industry.
Now, when I was a kid, the only way you could watch a movie or any video was using one of these VCR’s.
Many younger people have likely never have seen a VCR. Some might have spotted one at their grandparents’ homes, and you probably wondered what that big machine was.
VCR’s were large, clunky machines worked with large clunky cassettes, which were about as big as a book. To watch a movie, you would take that tape, put it into a machine, press rewind, when it was done rewinding, you would press “play.”
At its peak, the VCR industry was huge. After the spike in sales experienced thanks to Michael Jackson, the VCR industry did not slow down. It continued to grow and grow. The industry employed millions of people across the entire supply chain, from research and development to manufacturing to logistics to sales and distribution to after-sales service.
Even the cassettes had their entire own industry, all the way from manufacturing down through to sales and distribution. And there was an entire industry that was involved with transferring movies and videos onto cassettes and marketing them.
And then there was the video rental industry, where stores like Blockbuster hired out cassettes with movies on them.
It was a huge industry worth billions of dollars. An unstoppable juggernaut. But it was not meant to last.
In the mid 1990’s, DVD’s became mainstream and the VCR industry disappeared almost overnight.
Now what do you think happened to all of those millions and millions and millions of people who were involved in that industry? They died of starvation, right? Wrong!
What happened to them was they reskilled, upskilled, and got into other jobs. And today, we don’t find millions and millions of people standing with placards on the street corners saying that “I used to work in the VCR industry and now I’m starving.”
This is just one example. There dozens of different industries that were wiped out by technology, and it was the same pattern over and over again. Take the camera industry for example, which involved everything from manufacturing and sales of cameras and film, to processing those films to produce photographs.
All of those industries went by way of the dinosaur. What happened to those people? Again, they found other jobs. They went into other skills, they went into other professions, and the world went on.
So in the place that we are right now in the present, we are finding more and more new technologies coming out, and there are fears of those technologies taking jobs away. And no doubt, a lot of jobs will become obsolete. A lot of professions will become obsolete.
But what’s going to happen is that human beings, being resilient and adaptive, are going to move to other things. And we are always going to find jobs, and that is what is great about the future. We are always going to have opportunities.
But the true leaders of the future are those who are going to have the skills to embrace and own all of these new technological advancements, and to turn them into opportunities. And that, my friends, is what this book is all about.