Recently two companies have recognized that they are in trouble and are planning major changes. The first is Yahoo! Yahoo! has
announced a major reorg to improve agility. A recent memo from a senior vice president, that got inadvertently
leaked 
, outlines many flaws within the organization that inhibit its ability to compete effectively. Although Yahoo! was a pioneer in innovating using the Internet, it has recently been stumped by the likes of MySpace and Google. Both analysts and insiders have identified social networking companies as the primary reason for the set back. Interestingly, Yahoo! has the capability to compete effectively in that space. However, based on the memo it is clear that redundancy, turf battles and lack of accountability have contributed to the situation. This reorganization is expected to provide them with the ability to mix and match assets to create new business models and to compete effectively.
The second company is Dow Jones & Company's Wall Street Journal. Unlike Yahoo!, WSJ has a strong non-Internet presence. This has been both a blessing and a curse. WSJ seemed to have adopted to the Internet well and created a subscription base that was exposed to the print version and then some. The
proposed changes are aimed at making the online version more on news and providing "depth" only to the paper version. Does this mean that the subscribers of the online version do not care about depth? Many subscribers are used to reading articles on the Internet and are beginning to expect "depth." In fact, a key benefit of the online version is to create custom versions of the paper and read that in depth.
While the proposed changes may or may not work, what is clear is that the Internet continues to puzzle companies. In some case they can see viable business models and are unable to execute and in others they continue to search for business models.