The business environment is being disrupted by fast-moving innovators.
In the last few years we have seen some dramatic changes in the business world. Very young companies, such as Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook are achieving startling growth and are disrupting entire industries.
To competitors, it may seem that these companies are growing at impossible rates. These recent startups seem to defy the laws of nature. How can they grow so fast?
Interesting. But they can’t do it forever, and certainly there are limitations to any business. I think the last time we saw something like this, it was Microsoft, and of course everyone knows what kind of reputation they acquired. The question I would pose is, how could Social media enable them to maintain their growth, while preventing the same kind of PR debacle that Microsoft ran into? I personally feel that the market will keep them in check, and part of that will revolve around Social media channels to help bring that about. If the decentralization of information leads to the decentralization of power, then certainly one could argue that this will be a short-lived phenomena?
Hi Michael,
Certainly nobody can grow like this forever and when you get so big that there appears to be no alternative, or people think you are crushing competition, then there will be an outcry. Google has already been subject to anti-trust and privacy concerns.
Wal-Mart, although I didn’t mention them here, has a similar problem because they are perceived as so big that it’s impossible to compete with them.
Social media has been instrumental in the growth of companies like Amazon, if you consider reader reviews and author blogs social media (I do). Apple doesn’t do it as well, but they do it. User reviews on the App Store are pretty useful for example.
Jeff Bezos has said there are three things that Amazon focuses on: customer obsession, a willingness to invent, and a long-term point of view. If you take a short-term point of view, for example, you would never allow negative product reviews on your site, because in the short term that hurts sales. But if you take a long-term point of view, negative reviews help customers make better decisions, and if you help them with that you build trust.
The bigger a company gets, the more important it will be for them to be able to rely on that trust that was built up slowly over a long period of time. This is where I think Microsoft may have dropped the ball — over the years they made many decisions which eroded people’s trust and when it came time to rely on goodwill from customers, that trust wasn’t there.
Citing social media is certainly applicable for all current incumbents; Google, Amazon, et al, and also lack thereof for Microsoft. Had social media become more prevalent around, say 1996, I have to wonder, for example, if Netscape would have survived the browser wars?
I predict that social media is going to play a huge role in knocking certain players down to size, while building others up, and for the reasons that you’ve cited. You can only do so much, and then your audience becomes disenchanted for lack of access, affinity, etc.
My real interest is on the decentralization plane, assuming that so much of our economy and culture is going through a dramatic realignment in multiple areas.
Trends expert Gerald Celente predicted not long ago that two key trends were about to unfold; an emphasis on simple quality and local economies, and I think his prediction is coming true, and I think you could even point to some of the more recent movements that have popped-up, whether it be the new “Occupy” movement, tea party movement, Open Stack, etc. So by my perspective, big marketers may find themselves with a new challenge of learning how to effectively position themselves within such a trend in order to remain relevant for at least 5-7 years.
I agree with you Michael.
Regarding decentralization, I think two leaders there are Facebook and Amazon, who are building out strong platforms for their business partners to innovate on top of. With Facebook it’s the social graph and with Amazon it’s the marketplace. I think this will continue to unleash a lot of innovation that those companies, as wealthy as they are, could never pull off with internal resources. The whole space is just growing too fast for any one company to keep up.
I also think other platforms may open up, especially open platforms which could be very interesting if they can get traction. Google’s Android is an interesting move in that direction and they are probably the best-positioned to lead that charge.