At the weekend I spent a few melancholy hours wandering around a venue I have owned for over a decade. In its heyday it was a boisterous place. But it has been sold and the buyer takes possession next week.
I don’t regret the disposal, but it is still sad to say farewell to an enterprise one has nurtured for so long, now shut and unloved. For as Washington Irving said, “nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former flow and pageant”.
But too much nostalgia in business is deadly. The relentless march of progress can never be halted, no matter how much one pines for past glories. Look at dinosaurs such as Kodak, the world leader in photography for over a century. Its very purpose was the capture of memories. But the death of silver halide film, killed by the unstoppable rise of digital imaging, appears to have done for the US corporate giant. Kodak tried hard to reinvent itself, first in digital cameras and then printers. But it could never replace the margins and cash flow that it enjoyed from the legacy analogue business. Now it is engaged in a desperate scramble to liquidate its patent portfolio and stave off bankruptcy.