All entrepreneurs launch with the hope that their businesses will live forever – or at least survive the next hundred years. They develop long-term business plans, chart growth paths, and seek advice from veteran business owners. Those words of wisdom likely don’t advise them to find a way to “cannibalize” their own companies.

But even if your company hits the hundred-year mark, you should always be looking for ways to revolutionize your initial idea before someone else does. No cautionary tale better illustrates this point than Kodak.

Most people would be surprised to discover that Kodak invented the digital camera, but it didn’t commercialize it for fear of jeopardizing its film business. By the time Kodak realized its digital camera prot...