by Adam Hartung | Jul 8, 2011 | Books, Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Leadership, Lifecycle, Openness, Transparency, Web/Tech, Weblogs
Evolution doesn’t happen like we think. It’s not slow and gradual (like line A, below.) Things don’t go from one level of performance slowly to the next level in a nice continuous way. Rather, evolutionary change happens brutally fast. Usually the potential for change is building for a long time, but then there is some event – some environmental shift (visually depcted as B, below) – and the old is made obsolete while the new grows aggressively. Economists call this “punctuated equilibrium.” Everyone was on an old equilibrium, then they quickly shift to something new establishing a new equilibrium.
Momentum has been building for change in publishing for several years. Books are heavy, a pain to carry and often a pain to buy. Now eReaders, tablets and web downloads have changed the environment. And in June J.K. Rowling, author of those famous Harry Potter books, opened her new web site as the location to exclusively sell Harry Potter e-books (see TheWeek.com “How Pottermore Will Revolutionized Publishing.”)
Ms. Rowling has realized that the market has shifted, the old equilibrium is gone, and she can be part of the new one. She’ll let the dinosaur-ish publisher handle physical books, especially since Amazon has already shown us that physical books are a smaller market than ebooks. Going forward she doesn’t need the publisher, or the bookstore (not even Amazon) to capture the value of her series. She’s jumping to the new equilibrium.
And that’s why I’m encouraged about AOL these days. Since acquiring The Huffington Post company, things are changing at AOL. According to Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici, in “AOL After the Honeymoon,” AOL’s big slide down in users has begun to reverse direction. Many were surprised to learn, as the FinancialPost.com recently headlined, “Huffington Post Outstrips NYT Web Traffic in May.” 
Source: BusinessInsider.com
The old equilibrium in news publishing is obsolete. Those trying to maintain it keep failing, as recently headlined on PaidContent.org “Citing Weak Economy, Gannett Turns to Job Cuts, Furloughs.” Nobody should own a traditional publisher, that business is not viable.
But Forbes reports that Ms. Huffington has been given real White Space at AOL. She has permission to do what she needs to do to succeed, unbridled by past AOL business practices. That has included hiring a stable of the best talent in editing, at high pay packages, during this time when everyone else is cutting jobs and pay for journalists. This sort of behavior is anethema to the historically metric-driven “AOL Way,” which was very industrial management. That sort of permission is rarely given to an acquisition, but key to making it an engine for turn-around.
And HuffPo is being given the resources to implement a new model. Where HuffPo was something like 70 journalists, AOL is now cranking out content from some 2,000 journalists and editors! More than The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Huffington, as the new leader, is less about “managing for results” looking at history, and more about identifying market needs then filling them. By giving people what they want Huffington Post is accumulating readers – which leads to display ad revenue. Which, as my last blog reported, is the fastest growing area in on-line advertising
Where the people are, you can find advertsing. As people are shift away from newspapers, toward the web, advertising dollars are following. Internet now trails only television for ad dollars – and is likely to be #1 soon:
Chart source: Business Insider
So now we can see a route for AOL to succeed. As traditional AOL subscribers disappear – which is likely to accelerate – AOL is building out an on-line publishing environment which can generate ad revenue. And that’s how AOL can survive the market shift. To use an old marketing term, AOL can “jump the curve” from its declining business to a growing one.
This is by no means a given to succeed. AOL has to move very quickly to create the new revenues. Subscribers and traditional AOL ad revenues are falling precipitously.
Source: Forbes.com
But, HuffPo is the engine that can take AOL from its dying business to a new one. Just like we want Harry Potter digitally, and are happy to obtain it from Ms. Rowlings directly, we want information digitally – and free – and from someone who can get it to us. HuffPo is now winning the battle for on-line readers against traditional media companies. And it is expanding, announced just this week on MediaPost.com “HuffPo Debuts in the UK.” Just as the News Corp UK tabloid, News of the World, dies (The Guardian – “James Murdoch’s News of the World Closure is the Shrewdest of Surrenders.“)
News Corp. once had a shot at jumping the curve with its big investment in MySpace. But leadership wouldn’t give MySpace permission and resources to do whatever it needed to do to grow. Instead, by applying “professional management” it limited MySpace’s future and allowed Facebook to end-run it. Too much energy was spent on maintaining old practices – which led to disaster. And that’s the risk at AOL – will it really keep giving HuffPo permission to do what it needs to do, and the resources to make it happen? Will it stick to letting Ms. Huffington build her empire, and focus on the product and its market fit rather than short-term revenues? If so, this really could be a great story for investors.
So far, it’s looking very good indeed.
by Adam Hartung | Jun 30, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Swamp, Leadership, Web/Tech
Google rolled out its newest social media product this week. Unfortuntately for Google investors, this is not a good thing.
Internet usage is changing. Dramatically. Once the web was the world’s largest library, and simultaneously the world’s biggest shopping mall. In that environment, what everyone needed was to find things. And Google was the world’s best tool for finding things. When the noun, Google, became the verb “googled” (as in “I googled your history” or I googled your brand to see where I could buy it”) it was clear that Google had permanently placed itself in the long history of products that changed the world.
But increasingly the internet is not about just finding things. Today people are using the internet more as a way to network, communicate and cooperatively share information – using sites like Facebook, LInked-in and Twitter. Although web usage is increasing, old style “search-based” use is declining, with all the growth coming from “social-based” use: 
Chart source: AllThingsD.com
This poses a very real threat to Google. Not in 2011, but the indication is that being dominant in search has a limit to Google’s future revenue growth through selling search-based ads. And, in fact, while internet ads continue growing in all ad categories, none is growing as fast as display ads. And of this the Facebook market is growing the fastest, as MediaPost.com pointed out in its headline “On-line Ad Spend up, Facebook soars 22%.” In on-line display ads Facebook is now first, followed by Yahoo! (the original market dominator) and Google is third, as described in “Facebook Serves 25% of Display Ads.”
While Google is not going to become obsolete overnight, the trend is now distinctly moving away from Google’s area of domination and toward the social media marketplace. Products like Facebook are emerging as platforms which can displace your need for a web site (why build a web site when all you need is on their platform?) or even email. Their referral networks have the ability to be more powerful than a generic web search when you seek information. And by tying you together with others like you, they can probably move you to products and buying locations you really want faster than a keyword Google-style search. BNet.com headlined “How Facebook Intends to Supplant Google as the Web’s #1Utility,” and it just might happen – as we see users are increasingly spending more time on Facebook than Google: 
Source: Silicon Alley Insider
So, you would think it’s a good thing for Google to launch Google+. Although earlier efforts to enter this market were unsuccessful (Google Buzz and Google Wave being two well known efforts,) it would, on the surface, seem like Google has no option but to try, try again.
Only, Google + is not a breakthrough in social media. By all accounts its a collection of things already offered by Facebook and others, without any remarkable new packaging (see BusinessInsider.com “Google’s Launch of Google + is, once again, deeply embarrassing” or “Google Plus looks like everything else” or “Wow, Google+ looks EXACTLY like Facebook.”) With Facebook closing in on 1 billion users, it’s probably too late – and will be far too expensive, for Google to ever catch the big lead. Especially with Facebook in China, and Google noticably not.
Like many tech competitors, Google’s had a game-changer come along and move its customers toward a different solution. Google Plus will be in a gladiator war, where everyone gets bloody and several end up dead. NewsCorp is finally exiting social media as it sells MySpace for a $550m loss – clearly a body being drug from the colliseum! Even with its early lead, and big expenditures of time and managerial talent, NewsCorp was thrashed in the gladiator war. 
Source: BusinessInsider.com
Google may have a lot of money to spend on this battle, but shareholders will NOT benefit from the fight. It will be long, costly and inevitably not profitable. Yes, Google needs to find new ways to grow as the market shifts – but trying to do so by engaging such powerful, funded and well-positioned competitors as the big 3 of social media is not a smart investment.
And that leads us to why Google + is really problematic. Resources spent there cannot be spent on other opporunities which have high growth potential, and far fewer competitors. BI‘s headline “Google kills off two of its most ambitious projects” should send shudders of fear down shareholder backs. Google had practically no competitors in its efforts to change how Americans buy and use both healthcare servcies and utilities such as electricty and natural gas. Two enormous markets, where Google was alone in efforts to partner with other companies and rebuild supply chains in ways that would benefit consumers. Neither of these projects are as costly as Google+, and neither has entrenched competition. Both are enormous, and Google was the early entrant, with game-changing solutions, from which it could capture most, if not all, the value — just as it did with its early search and ad-words success.
Additionally, Chromebooks is now coming to market. Android has been a remarkable success, trouncing RIM and with multiple vendors supporting it rapidly taking ground from Apple’s iPhone. Only Google has made almost nothing from this platform. Chromebooks offers a way for Google to improve monetizing its growing – and perhaps someday #1 – platform in the rapidly growing tablet business against a very weak Microsoft. But, with so much attention on Google+ Microsoft is given berth for launching its Office 365 product as a challenger. With so much opportunity in cloud computing, and Google’s early lead in multiple products, Google has a real chance of being bigger than Apple someday. But it’s movement into social media will not allow it to focus on cloud products as it should, and give Microsoft renewed opportunity to compete.
Google is setting itself up for potential disaster. While its historical business slowly starts losing its growth, the company is entering into 3 very expensive gladiator wars. First is the ongoing battle for smartphone users against Apple, where it is spending money on Android that largely benefits handset manufacturers. Secondly it is now facing a battle for enterprise and personal productivity apps based in cloud computing where it has not yet succeeding in taking the lead position, yet faces increasing competition from Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s new round of cloud apps. And on top of that Google now tells investors it is going to go toe-to-toe with the fastest growing software companies out there – Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter and a host of other entrants. And to fund this they are abandoning markets where they were practically the only game changing solution.
There’s a lot yet to happen in the fast-moving tech markets. But now is the time for investors to wait and see. Google’s engineers are very talented. But it’s strategy may well be very costly, and unable to compete on all fronts. You may not want to sell Google shares today, but it’s hard to find a reason to buy them.
by Adam Hartung | Feb 1, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Television, Web/Tech
Summary:
- There is dramatic change in the television/media industry
- NBC Universal/Comcast is changing ownership, and leaders
- The company’s future success will have more to do with which battles the new President invests in than the history, or style of the past and future company President’s
- Trying to “fix” the old business will waste resources and harm future prospects
- Success will require developing a management approach that gives permission and resources to find a path to the future – a future that will be nothing like the past
NBC Universal is changing owners, from General Electric to Comcast. The former NBC President, Jeff Zucker, is being replaced by Steve Burke. Stylistically, it’s hard to imagine two fellas less alike. Mr. Burke, portraited in the New York Times “A Little Less Drama at NBC,” is a mild-mannered, quiet, self-effacing executive who almost attended divinity school. He avoids the limelight as much as he avoids being abrasive with colleagues. The outgoing Mr. Zucker is by all accounts brash,abrasive and quick to make decisions, as he was portraited in PaidContent.org “Was Jeff Zucker Really So Bad For NBC Universal?“
But it isn’t executive style that will determine whether Mr. Burke succeeds. Although NBCU just returned its highest profits since 2004, the television and media industries are in dramatic transition. Things aren’t like they used to be, and they will never be that way again. Growing revenues, and profits, at the combined NBCU/Comcast will require Mr. Burke quickly move both companies into a different kind of competitor focused on the changed market of 2015 – when media customers and suppliers will both be very different, with quite different demands.
Although Mr. Zucker is blasted for allowing NBC’s ratings to fall to last among the Big 3 networks (including CBS and ABC), it’s not at all clear why that wasn’t a smart move. What has grown NBC’s profits has been far removed from network programming. It was the acquisition of cable channels USA and Sci Fi (now Syfy) via Universal, and later Bravo, Oxygen and The Weather Channel that contributed greatly to NBC’s revenue and profit growth. These were also enhanced by building, from scratch, the #1 business-content television channel at CNBC, and the profitable, somewhat populist counter-channel to powerhouse conservative Fox News with MSNBC. Despite what the critics (who are largely interested in programs rather than profits) have said, it may have been an act of brilliance to avoid investing in the declining business that is prime time network programming.
What anyone thinks about the brouhaha over Jay Leno’s attempt at prime time, and Conan O’Brien’s stint leading The Today Show, is immaterial to revenue growth and profits. I’m a late boomer, so I remember when there were only 3 stations, and Johny Carson dominated the post-news late evening. But now I have college age sons that don’t even own televisions, have almost no idea who Jay Leno is (other than know of him as a car and motorcycle collector) and find all interview programs boring. “Network” TV is something they don’t quite understand – since their tolerance for watching entertainment on someone else’s pre-determined schedule is non-existent, and their patience for sitting through commercials of real-time programming is even lower. In other words, what happens in the “prime time” race, or with network celebrities, really doesn’t matter any more. And if NBCU can’t grow viewers it can’t grow ad revenues – so why should it invest in the prime time business? Just because it used to? Or started that way?
While lots of media “experts” are screaming for Mr. Burke to “fix” NBC, that business is already well into the hospice. Network share of entertainment interest is falling rapidly as boomers die, dozens of new offerings are micro-targeting across the channel spectrum, and we all turn to the internet for downloads, ignoring the TV for news or entertainment several additional hours each year. Meanwhile, people under the age of 30 aren’t even watching much television any more. They just pretend to watch while sitting with their parents as they text, check Facebook or watch a downloaded program on their iPhone.
“Network” programming is a business which is not going to grow again. Given how costs are increasing for traditional shows, and the over-explosion of inexpensive “reality” or “news” shows, and fragmentation and decline of advertising why would anyone ever expect this to be a profitable business? Being last in that 3 horse race is about as interesting as tracking share of market for printed phone directories. Probably the first to quit ist he big winner. So why should Mr. Burke spend much time, or money, fighting the last war? “Fixing” that outdated business model is fraught with high risk, and low return. Now that tthe artificial limits on news and entertainment programming have been removed (thanks to the internet) isn’t it time to let go of that historial artifact and focus on the future?
We know the future will be a mix of traditional TV (at least for a while, but don’t make any bets on it being too long), as well as targeted channels we now refer to as “cable” (even though that moniker is clearly losing meaning in a WiFi world.) Some of these will be free access, and some will be paid content. But all of that now must compete with downloads from Netfilx, Hulu (in which NBCU is a part owner) and YouTube (partially owned by Google.) People can create and post their own programs, and even do their own marketing. Instant availability, reviews and promotion will be couresy of Twitter and Facebook. This is a lot more complex than just ordering a new crime drama series, or situation comedy, and foisting it on a market with only a handful of channel options.
Viewership will range from 50″ panels, to 2″ hand-held screens – with a plethora of optional sizes in between. Program length will be infinitely variable from hours of non-stop viewing to constantly interrupted sound bites, no longer proscribed by 30 minute increments. Traditional programming, like local or national “news” will have little meaning, or value, in 2020 (or maybe 2015) when we will be receiving instant updates several times each day on our mobile device.
Mr. Zucker did a yeoman’s job of steering NBCU toward the future. He was smart enough to understand that only historians, locked-in media critics and old farts in Lay-Z-Boys care about what’s happening on The Tonight Show or the NBC News. His primary investments were oriented toward understanding the future, and getting NBCU’s toes into that rapidly churning water where future growth lies. But he’s leaving just as the stream is turning into a torrent. Even what he did could well be out of date within a few years – or months!
Now it is Mr. Burke’s turn. The very pleasant fellow has a daunting challenge. If he isn’t supposed to “double down” his bets in network TV, and traditional “cable,” what is he supposed to do? In a dramatically changing advertising world, where Google, Facebook and mobile device ads are now becoming the hot markets, what is the role for NBCU/Comcast? If we no longer need the physucal cable (say in 2020), won’t Comcast lose subscribers for cable access just like we’re seeing declines in subscribers for newspapers, DVD subscriptions, land-line telephones and land-line long distance? What is the role of a “programmer” like NBCU if viewers all have unlimited access to everything, anytime, anywhere, in any format? And what is the value of a content provider if self-published content streams onto the web by the terabyte daily? And is sorted by engines like Google and YouTube?
What Mr. Burke must do, regardless of style, is develop some scenarios about the future, and understand the much more complex playing field that is today’s media business. He has to find the holes in competition, and learn how to leverage what the “fringe” competitors are doing that drives all that usage, and viewership. And, most importantly, he has to keep experimenting – just as Mr. Zucker did. He has to create opportunities to test the newly developing markets, figure out who will buy, and what they will buy. He has to set up white space teams who have permission to be experimental, even if they attack the old businesses like “network” TV – even cannibalizing the historical viewr base as they transition toward future media markets. If he can create these teams, give them the right permission and resources, NBCU/Comcast could be the next great media company.
We’ll have to wait and see. Will the sirens of the past, looking backward, pull the company into gladiator battles with old foes trying to hold share in narrowing, declining markets? That path looks like a sure disaster. Despite being an early leader with satellite TV and MySpace that approach has not helped NewsCorp. But betting on the future is more a bet on the journey, and finding the right path, than betting on any particular destination. The future-based approach takes a lot of faith in company leadership, and the company management team. It will be interesting to see which way Mr. Burke goes.
by Adam Hartung | Jan 13, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
Before there was Facebook, the social media juggernaut which is changing how we communicate – and might change the face of media – there was MySpace. MySpace was targeted at the same audience, had robust capability, and was to market long before Facebook. It generated enormous interest, received a lot of early press, created huge valuation when investors jumped in, and was undoubtedly not only an early internet success – but a seminal web site for the movement we now call social media. On top of that, MySpace was purchased by News Corporation, a powerhouse media company, and was given professional managers to help guide its future as well as all the resources it ever wanted to support its growth. By almost all ways we look at modern start-ups, MySpace was the early winner and should have gone on to great glory.
But things didn’t turn out that way. Facebook was hatched by some college undergrads, and started to grow. Meanwhile MySpace stagnated as Facebook exploded to 600 million active users. During early 2010, according to The Telegraph in “Facebook Dominance Forces Rival Networks to Go Niche,” MySpace gave up on its social media leadership dreams and narrowed its focus to the niche of being a “social entertainment destination.” As the number of users fell, MySpace was forced to cut costs, laying off half its staff this week according to MediaPost.com “MySpace Confirms Massive Layoffs.” After losing a reported $350million last year, it appears that MySpace may disappear – “MySpace Versus Facebook – There Can Be Only One” reported at Gigaom.com. The early winner now appears a loser, most likely to be unplugged, and a very expensive investment with no payoff for NewsCorp investors.
What went wrong? A lot of foks will be relaying the tactics of things done and not done at MySpace. As well as tactics done and not done at Facebook. But underlying all those tactics was a very simple management mistake News Corp. made. News Corp tried to guide MySpace, to add planning, and to use “professional management” to determine the business’s future. That was fatally flawed when competing with Facebook which was managed in White Space, lettting the marketplace decide where the business should go.
If the movie about Facebook’s founding has any veracity, we can accept that none of the founders ever imagined the number of people and applications that Facebook would quickly attract. From parties to social games to product reviews and user networks – the uses that have brought 600 million users onto Facebook are far, far beyond anything the founders envisioned. According to the movie, the first effort to sell ads to anyone were completely unsuccessful, as uses behond college kids sharing items on each other were not on the table. It appeared like a business bust at the beginning.
But, the brilliance of Mark Zuckerberg was his willingness to allow Facebook to go wherever the market wanted it. Farmville and other social games – why not? Different ways to find potential friends – go for it. The founders kept pushing the technology to do anything users wanted. If you have an idea for networking on something, Facebook pushed its tech folks to make it happen. And they kept listening. And looking within the comments for what would be the next application – the next promotion – the next revision that would lead to more uses, more users and more growth.
And that’s the nature of White Space management. No rules. Not really any plans. No forecasting markets. Or foretelling uses. No trying to be smarter than the users to determine what they shouldn’t do. Not prejudging ideas so as to limit capability and focus the business toward a projected conclusion. To the contrary, it was about adding, adding, adding and doing whatever would allow the marketplace to flourish. Permission to do whatever it takes to keep growing. And resource it as best you can – without prejudice as to what might work well, or even best. Keep after all of it. What doesn’t work stop resourcing, what does work do more.
Contrarily, at NewsCorp the leaders of MySpace had a plan. NewsCorp isn’t run by college kids lacking business sense. Leaders create Powerpoint decks describing where the business will head, where they will invest, how they will earn a positive ROI, projections of what will work – and why – and then plans to make it happen. They developed the plan, and then worked the plan. Plan and execute. The professional managers at News Corp looked into the future, decided what to do, and did it. They didn’t leave direction up to market feedback and crafty techies – they ran MySpace like a professional business.
And how’d that work out for them?
Unfortunately, MySpace demonstrates a big fallacy of modern management. The belief that smart MBAs, with industry knowledge, will perform better. That “good management” means you predict, you forecast, you plan, and then you go execute the plan. Instead of reacting to market shifts, fast, allowing mistakes to happen while learning what works, professional managers should be able to predict and perform without making mistakes. That once the bright folks who create the strategy set a direction, its all about executing the plan. That execution will lead to success. If you stumble, you need to focus harder on execution.
When managing innovation, including operating in high growth markets, nothing works better than White Space. Giving dedicated people permission to do whatever it takes, and resources, then holding their feet to the fire to demonstrate performance. Letting dedicated people learn from their successes, and failures, and move fast to keep the business in the fast moving water. There is no manager, leader or management team that can predict, plan and execute as well as a team that has its ears close to the market, and the flexibility to react quickly, willing to make mistakes (and learn from them even faster) without bias for a predetermined plan.
The penchant for planning has hurt a lot of businesses. Rarely does a failed business lack a plan. Big failures – like Circuit City, AIG, Lehman Brothers, GM – are full of extremely bright, well educated (Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, Wharton) MBAs who are prepared to study, analyze, predict, plan and execute. But it turns out their crystal ball is no better than – well – college undergraduates.
When it comes to applying innovation, use White Space teams. Drop all the business plan preparation, endless crunching of historical numbers, multi-tabbed Excel spreadsheets and powerpoint matrices. Instead, dedicate some people to the project, push them into the market, make them beg for resources because they are sure they know where to put them (without ROI calculations) and tell them to get it done – or you’ll fire them. You’ll be amazed how fast they (and your company) will learn – and grow.
by Adam Hartung | May 17, 2010 | Defend & Extend, Disruptions, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Openness, Web/Tech
I get the most heat when I talk about spending less time listening customers. But I'm not joking. To grow revenues and profits you have to go far beyond asking your customers – who are more likely to hold you back from growth than accelerate it.
BusinessInsider.com makes this point loudly in an Henry Blodgett article "Ignore the Scream's — Facebook's Aggressive Approach is Why It Will Soon Become the Most Popular Site in the World." Given how many people use Facebook, it's hard to remember that the site is only 6 years old. What we've also mostly forgotten is that Facebook wasn't even first. It followed the popular, and well financed after acquisition by News Corp, MySpace.com. Lots of companies got into social networking. But now the marketplace is dominated by Facebook – which will soon be the web's most popular site (as it closes in on Google.)
Facebook did not win by asking users/customers what they wanted. To the contrary, Facebook's leaders took the approach of offering what they perceived would be steps forward – and then letting the market react. Frequently a VERY loud contingent would be VERY upset. Screaming loudly they hated the change. But with each advancement, Facebook grew users and the site's success. Facebook didn't ask users what they wanted, nor did they ask users for permission to do new things. Facebook went into the market, and using its scenarios about the future Facebook's leaders drove toward what they expected to be a more popular site. They did it, and learned from their experience.
Too many businesses spend way too much time trying to make small advances, and miss the big shifts. Microsoft is a great example. As it launches Office 2010, Microsoft isn't trying to bring in new users to grow its base – like Facebook is doing. Instead it is trying to preserve its installed base. Nonetheless, some "loss" is a given. You can't preserve forever. If you don't bring in new customers, you can't grow because you have to replace lost ones and find incremental new ones. But what do we see in Microsoft's offerings (such as Office 2010 and System 7) that is designed to bring in new users?
Meanwhile, Google is offering more powerful and cheaper Cloud-based solutions, as Apple and Google grow the demand for mobile devices (like iPhone and iPad) that don't use Microsoft products. The big shifts are all away from Microsoft, while Microsoft's efforts at preservation are leaving these alternatives with limited competition.
Today Bnet Australia posted a podcast interview I did with Phil Dobbie, sponsored by CBS, last week. In "Disrupt To Win" we discuss the big difference between Apple and Google as compared to Microsoft. The growing companies use scenarios to develop new solutions which will appeal to new users. They keep expanding the marketplace. As new users adopt new solutions, eventually it becomes mainstream – further accelerating growth. Growth doesn't come from trying to Defend the old platform or user base, but from launching new solutions which grow the market leading to conversion and even greater growth.
Facebook is now a phenomenon, growing in 6 years from obscurity to the second largest global user base. Because, like Apple and Google, the leadership did not ask customers what they wanted (which was what MySpace.com did). Rather, they studied competitors and emerging markets to create new solutions – without worrying about cannibalization or moving faster than customers would recommend. And the leadership has been willing to overlook vocal user minorities in order to appeal to new users, thus driving more growth. You can't expect customers to deliver great growth, that has to come from aggressive scenario planning, deep competitive analysis and a willingness to Disrupt your organization and the marketplace.
