by Adam Hartung | May 7, 2021 | Growth Stall, Innovation, Investing, Strategy, Telecom, Trends
Do you have any idea how powerful AOL and Yahoo once were, and how much they were once worth? Do you know how much shareholder value has been destroyed in these 2 companies in just 20 years? $221 Billion of destroyed wealth.
AOL pioneered the web as we know it today. Long before wireless, or broadband, there was “dial up service.” For young readers, that meant using a physical modem to connect your computer to a land-line telephone in order to literally dial up a connection to an internet service provider. AOL pioneered using the internet, and was the #1 connection with almost the entire marketplace. The phrase that made AOL famous back then was when you connected to AOL and it gave us the now iconic “You’ve got mail.” After connecting America, in 2000 AOL merged with Time Warner media in a deal valuing AOL at $111B.
Yahoo pioneered giving internet users news. It accumulated news from around the world on Sports, Economy and many other topics, making the news available to readers for free because it sold ads to pay the bills. In 2000 a publicly traded Yahoo was valued at $125B.
So in 2000, amidst a very extended NASDAQ internet hype, AOL and Yahoo were valued at $226B.
Image Source
This week Verizon agreed to sell the two companies to a private equity firm for $5B. That’s a loss in value of $221B in 21 years.
How does a loss of this magnitude happen? A lot of focusing on tactics, ignoring market trends and failing to adapt the company strategy to meet changing competitive dynamics. Broadband and wireless eventually made dial-up irrelevant. And despite buying some media company to try and add new content to AOL, it lost all meaning. Time Warner spun it out to the public at a value of $3.5B in 2009.
Then, Verizon thought it could build a proprietary content company to get more Verizon customers so it bought AOL in 2015 for $4.4B. Only, nobody needed another content provider by then. Google served up general content just fine, Facebook gave us content we looked at frequently, and specialized content sites like Finance (Marketwatch) and Sports (ESPN) made it impossible that late in the game to launch a general purpose content accumulator and reposter. It was a strategy for 2005, not 2015. Meanwhile, Yahoo made one tactical decision after another to shore up its old model that didn’t work. Google became vastly better at search, and vastly better at delivering content. Tactical oriented CEOs Carol Bartz and Marissa Mayer had no strategy to meet emerging needs of the 2010 decade and beyond – leading Yahoo into complete irrelevancy.
Undeterred, the Verizon owned AOL bought Yahoo in 2017 for $4.5B. After all, it seemed cheap compared to its once $125B value – right? The idea was to merge the two companies, create “cost synergies” and “scale” in users to sell more advertising. Only, neither platform had enough original content to stop the user bleed to other sites. Netflix and Google’s YouTube took everyone who wanted new content away, and there was nothing left for AOL/Yahoo to deliver. It became the internal combustion engine repair shop in a world full of EVs
Now, after spending $9.9B on the entities plus much more in acquisitions, Verizon is selling both entities to Apollo Global Management private equity for $5B – a loss of $4.4B. And Apollo thinks this is a good deal because “a high tide raises all boats” and it will win merely because the world is increasingly using the internet. Really? More people are using the web, and more often, but they’ve already shown not via AOL nor Yahoo. Facebook, Instagram, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, and a raft of other sites are gaining the traffic. What was once irrelevant remains irrelevant.
It is crucial to understand why these to GIANTS of the internet are now part of history’s dustbin. While they pioneered the market, gaining huge revenues, share and valuation, they did NOT keep their eyes on disruptive innovators who could change the market they pioneered. Broadband killed dial-up, and because AOL moved too late it died. Google overtook search, delivering more content faster and better, and Yahoo simply waited too long to react. Not unlike how Research in Motion (Blackberry) failed to see the “app wave” in mobile coming and lost its enormous lead in mobile phones to Apple and Samsung. All thought their strength in pioneering was enough – and failed to keep their eyes on external trends and new market shifts that would change competition.
I wrote a raft of columns about the mistakes made by these company CEOs from 2009 through 2017 – constantly telling readers not to buy the stocks (just search the blogs my website adamhartung.com for AOL or Yahoo.) It is extremely rare for a corporation locked into its business model and cost cutting to adjust to a rapidly shifting market. When a company does so – like Jobs turned around Apple and Nadella at Microsoft – it is the exception to be well applauded. But that is very, very rare.
And this is NOT what PE companies do. They aren’t visionary investors who put in lots of money to change companies. They cut costs, streamline operations, and add debt to get their investment back. Apollo is no different. It has no vision of the internet future that will slow Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet/Google or even Amazon. It has purchased two irrelevant brands with outdated business models, no new technology, no new market approaches and no new insight to future unmet needs. There is no doubt Apollo will not turn these around. Apollo will unload this newest Yahoo! over-leveraged to a public debt market dominated by pension funds and it will soon enough file bankruptcy, finishing the coffin.
Do you think you could turn these around? First, are you ready to turn around your own business? Are you focused on how market shifts, happening today, will change your market? Are you seeing trends, and changing your business model and technology to adjust? Are you building a business around future scenarios you’ve created to compete in 2025 and beyond with different competitors offering different solutions? Or are you relying on past strengths to carry you through the future? If you’re planning with your eyes firmly in the rear view mirror I highly recommend you learn the lesson from AOL and Yahoo – that approach will not work.
Do you know your Value Proposition? Can you clearly state that Value Proposition without any linkage to your Value Delivery System? If not, you better get on that pretty fast. Otherwise, you’re very likely to end up like encyclopedias and newspaper companies. Or you’ll develop a neat technology that’s the next Segway. It’s always know your customer and their needs first, then create the solution. Don’t be a solution looking for an application. Hopefully Uber and Aurora will both now start heading in the right directions.
Did you see the trends, and were you expecting the changes that would happen to your demand? It IS possible to use trends to make good forecasts, and prepare for big market shifts. If you don’t have time to do it, perhaps you should contact us, Spark Partners. We track hundreds of trends, and are experts at developing scenarios applied to your business to help you make better decisions.
TRENDS MATTER. If you align with trends your business can do GREAT! Are you aligned with trends? What are the threats and opportunities in your strategy and markets? Do you need an outsider to assess what you don’t know you don’t know? You’ll be surprised how valuable an inexpensive assessment can be for your future business. Click for Assessment info. Or, to keep up on trends, subscribe to our weekly podcasts and posts on trends and how they will affect the world of business at www.SparkPartners.com
Give us a call or send an email. Adam@sparkpartners.com 847-726-8465.
by Adam Hartung | Feb 9, 2016 | Current Affairs, In the Swamp, Leadership, Web/Tech
Verizon tipped its hand that it would be interested to buy Yahoo back in December. In the last few days this possibility drew more attention as Verizon’s CFO confirmed interest on CNBC, and Bloomberg reported that AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong is investigating a potential acquisition. There are some very good reasons this deal makes sense:
First, this acquisition has the opportunity to make Verizon distinctive. Think about all those ads you see for mobile phone service. Pretty much alike. All of them trying to say that their service is better than competitors, in a world where customers don’t see any real difference. 3G, 4G – pretty soon it feels like they’ll be talking about 10G – but users mostly don’t care. The service is usually good enough, and all competitors seem the same.
So, that leads to the second element they advertise – price. How many different price programs can anyone invent? And how many phone or tablet give-aways. What is clear is that the competition is about price. And that means the product has become generic. And when products are generic, and price is the #1 discussion, it leads to low margins and lousy investor returns.
But a Yahoo acquisition would make Verizon differentiated. Verizon could offer its own unique programming, at a meaningful level, and make it available only on their network. And this could offer price advantages. Like with Go90 streaming, Verizon customers could have free downloads of Verizon content, while having to pay data fees for downloads from other sites like YouTube, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, Amazon Prime, etc. The Verizon customer could have a unique experience, and this could allow Verizon to move away from generic selling and potentially capture higher margins as a differentiated competitor.
Second, Yahoo will never be a lead competitor and has more value as a supporting player. Yahoo has lost its lead in every major competitive market, and it will never catch up. Google is #1 in search, and always will be. Google is #1 in video, with Facebook #2, and Yahoo will never catch either. Ad sales are now dominated by adwords and social media ads – and Yahoo is increasingly an afterthought. Yahoo’s relevance in digital advertising is at risk, and as a weak competitor it could easily disappear.
But, Verizon doesn’t need the #1 player to put together a bundled solution where the #2 is a big improvement from nothing. By integrating Yahoo services and capabilities into its unique platform Verizon could take something that will never be #1 and make it important as part of a new bundle to users and advertisers. As supporting technology and products Yahoo is worth quite a bit more to Verizon than it will ever be as an independent competitor to investors – who likely cannot keep up the investment rates necessary to keep Yahoo alive.
Third, Yahoo is incredibly cheap. For about a year Yahoo investors have put no value on the independent Yahoo. The company’s value has been only its stake in Alibaba. So investors inherently have said they would take nothing for the traditional “core” Yahoo assets.
Additionally, Yahoo investors are stuck trying to capture the Alibaba value currently locked-up in Yahoo. If they try to spin out or sell the stake then a $10-12Billion tax bill likely kicks in. By getting rid of Yahoo’s outdated business what’s left is “YaBaba” as a tracking stock on the NASDAQ for the Chinese Alibaba shares. Or, possibly Alibaba buys the remaining “YaBaba” shares, putting cash into the shareholder pockets — or giving them Alibaba shares which they may prefer. Etiher way, the tax bill is avoided and the Alibaba value is unlocked. And that is worth considerably more than Yahoo’s “core” business.
So it is highly unlikely a deal is made for free. But lacking another likely buyer Verizon is in a good position to buy these assets for a pretty low value. And that gives them the opportunity to turn those assets into something worth quite a lot more without the overhang of huge goodwill charges left over from buying an overpriced asset – as usually happens in tech.
Fourth, Yahoo finally gets rid of an ineffectual Board and leadership team. The company’s Board has been trying to find a successful leader since the day it hired Carol Bartz. A string of CEOs have been unable to define a competitive positioning that works for Yahoo, leading to the current lack of investor enthusiasm.
The current CEO Mayer and her team, after months of accomplishing nothing to improve Yahoo’s competitiveness and growth prospects, is now out of ideas. Management consulting firm McKinsey & Company has been brought in to engineer yet another turnaround effort. Last week we learned there will be more layoffs and business closings as Yahoo again cannot find any growth prospects. This was the turnaround that didn’t, and now additional value destruction is brought on by weak leadership.
Most of the time when leaders fail the company fails. Yahoo is interesting because there is a way to capture value from what is currently a failing situation. Due to dramatic value declines over the last few years, most long-term investors have thrown in the towel. Now the remaining owners are very short-term, oriented on capturing the most they can from the Alibaba holdings. They are happy to be rid of what the company once was. Additionally, there is a possible buyer who is uniquely positioned to actually take those second-tier assets and create value out of them, and has the resources to acquire the assets and make something of them. A real “win/win” is now possible.
by Adam Hartung | Mar 30, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Swamp, Innovation, Leadership
Summary:
- Too many leaders spend too much effort minimizing uncertainty
- Stock buybacks reflect fear of uncertainty, but are a losing investment
- Good performing organizations invest in new markets, products and services
- Success comes from not only investing, but in learning quickly what works (or doesn’t) and rapidly adapting
“If you don’t ever do anything, you can never screw up” my boss said.
I was 20 years old working in the blazing Oklahoma July sun at a grain elevator. I had asked the maintenance lead to modify a tool, thinking I could work faster. Unfortunately, my idea failed and my production started lagging. Offload production was slowing. I had to ask that the tool be put back to original condition, and I apologized to the elevator manager for my mistake.
That’s when he used my opening line, and went on to say “Don’t ever quit trying to do better. You’re a clever kid. Sometimes ideas work, sometimes they don’t, but if we dont’ try them we’ll never know. That’s why I agreed to your idea originally. I’ll accept a few well-intentioned ‘mistakes’ as long as you learn from them. Now go back to work and try to make up that production before end of day.”
Far too few leaders today give, or follow, such advice. The Economist recently waxed eloquently about how much today’s leaders dislike any kind of uncertainty (see “From Tsunami’s to Typhoons“). Most very consciously make decisions intended to reduce uncertainty – regardless of the impact on results! Rather than take advantage of events and trends, doing something new and different, they intentionally downplay market changes and diligently seek ways to make it appear as if things are not changing – amidst massive change! The mere fact that there is uncertainty seems to be the most troubling issue, as leaders don’t want to deal with it, nor know how.
This fear of uncertainty manifest itself in decisions to buy back stock, rather than invest in new products, services and markets. 24/7 Wall Street reported $34B in announced share buybacks in early February (2011 Stock Buybacks on Fire), only to update that to $40B by end of the month. Literally dozens of companies choosing to spend money on buying their own shares, which creates no economic value at all, rather than invest in something that could create growth! And these aren’t just companies with limited prospects, but include what have been considered growth entities like Pfizer, Astra-Zeneca, Electronic Arts, MedcoHealth, Verizon, Semantec, Yum! Brands, Quest, Kohl’s, Varian and Gamestop to name just a few.
All of these companies have opportunities to grow – heck, all companies have the opportunity to grow. But there is inherent uncertainty in spending money on something that might not work out. So, instead, they are taking hard earned cash flow and spending it on buying back the company stock. The real certainty, from this investment, is that it limits growth — and eventually will lead to a smaller company that’s worth less. Don’t forget, the only investment Sara Lee made under Brenda Barnes the last 5 years was buying back stock – and now the company has shriveled up to less than half its former size while the equity value has disintegrated. Nobody wins from share buybacks – with the possible exception of senior executives who have compensation tied to stock price.
At the Harvard Business Review Umar Haque admonishes leaders today “Fail Bigger Cheaper: A Three Word Manifesto.” Silicon valley investors, deep into understanding our change to an information economy, are far less interested in “scale” and more interested in how leaders, and their companies, are learning faster – so they see where they might fail faster – and then being nimble enough to adjust based upon what they learned. And not just to do more of the same better, but in order to identify bigger targets – larger opportunities – than originally imagined. Often the “failure” can direct the business into grander opportunities which have even higher payoffs.
That’s why we don’t see companies like Google, Apple, Netflix, Virgin, or Cisco buying back their own stock. They see opportunities, and they invest. They don’t all work out. Remember Google Wave? Looked great – didn’t make it – but so what? Google learns from what works, and what doesn’t, and uses that information to help it develop newer, more powerful growth markets.
Long ago Apple let its lack of success with the Newton PDA cause it to retrench into strictly Mac development – which took the company to the brink of disaster by 2000. Since then, by investing in new markets and new products, Apple has grown revenues and profits like crazy, making it more valuable than arch-rival Microsoft and close to being the most valuable publicly traded company.
Source: Silicon Alley Insider of BusinessInsider.com
Virgin used its success in music retailing to enter the trans-atlantic airline business (Virgin Atlantic). Since then it has launched dozens of businesses. Some didn’t work out – like Virgin Bridal – but many more have, such as Virgin Money, Virgin Mobil, Virgin Connect – to name just a handful of the many Virgin businesses that contribute to company growth and value creation.
Nobody wants to screw up. But, unless you do nothing, it is inevitable. No leader, or company, can create high value if they don’t overcome their fear of uncertainty and invest in innovation. But, hand-in-glove with such investing is the requirement to learn fast whether an innovation is working, or not. And to adapt. Some things need time for the market to develop, others need technology advances, and others need a change in direction toward different customers. It’s the ability to invest in uncertain situations, then pay attention to market feedback in order to recognize how well the idea is working, and constantly adapt to market learning that sets apart those companies creating wealth today.
Update 4/1/2011 – AOLSmallBusiness.com reminds us of another great adaptation story, based upon entering an unknown market and learning, in “Yes, Even Apple Screws Up Sometimes.” When personal computers were all text-based machines Apple introduced the Lisa as the first commercial computer to utilize on-screen icons, and a mouse for navigation, as well as other key productivity enhancers like the trash can. But the Lisa failed. Apple studied the market, kept what was desirable and modified what wasn’t, re-introducing the product as the Macintosh in 1984. The Mac was a huge success, creating enormous value for Apple which was undeterred by both the uncertainty of the fledgling PC market and its initial failure at various changes in the user interface.
by Adam Hartung | Aug 26, 2010 | Defend & Extend, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Lifecycle
Summary:
- Trends happen much faster than we expect
- Old solutions disappear much faster than we anticipate
- Early adopters are big winners, suppliers who expect markets to last longer are killed in end-stage price wars
- We can anticipate the failure of land line phones in just a few years (as declining demand makes infrastructure maintenance too costly)
- There are a lot of other changes coming very quickly, more quickly than many of us anticipate – putting those who are late to change at risk of survival
How long do you think you’ll keep a land-line based telephone? From the looks of things, it may be only another year or two. They may be as popular as an old-fashioned printing press in just 5 years.
Source: Silicon Alley Insider from BusinessInsider.com
As the chart shows, already about a third of Americans have discontinued their land lines. And, we can see the trend is accelerating. This doesn’t count people that have one, but have quit using it. From about half of a percent dropping their line each quarter early in 2007, by 2009 the trend had increased to 1.2 to 1.5 percent dropping their land lines quarterly. And that’s normal – trends accelerate – much faster than incumbent technology suppliers predict.
Mobile phones started out with limited use. They were big, and had short battery life. It was sketchy if transmission quality would be good enough to hear or talk. They were expensive to use, and had limited service areas. In the early days, only people who had a big need used them. It took a few years before adoption grew to where most people had one. But then, in the last 5 years, it has become clear that almost everyone has one. Even the old and elderly. And many people have two – one for personal and one for business.
When trends begin they are easy to discount. Early versions are less good than the current solution. Costs are high. But early adopters have a reason to pick up the new solution. There is some kind of unmet need that the solution fits. From that small base, the products improve. Most incumbent suppliers plot out a linear curve adoption curve, and expect dropping of the old solution to be some time way out in the future.
But improvements to the “fringe” solution come faster than incumbents – and even big users of incumbent technologies – expect. Adoption starts growing faster. Yet, the incumbent supplier will listen to big customers and expect people to keep their solutions for a long time as they gradually adopt the new:
- People will have an automobile, but they’ll hang onto the horse and buggy because roads are so poor
- He may buy a new copier, but he’ll keep the mimeo machine “just in case”
- Folks will get a phone, and email, but they’ll keep writing letters and thus need a postman daily
- People may buy refrigerators, but they’ll keep the icebox and want weekly ice delivery
- Readers will skim the web for news, but they’ll want to keep reading a daily newspaper
- PCs will be popular, but folks will hang onto that old typewriter “maybe to type envelopes or something”
- Installing spreadsheets on company PC’s will not eliminate the need for adding machines “for when we need the tape”
- Digital cameras will be convenient, but users will want the film camera for picture prints
- Installing a DVR will not eliminate the videocassette player because people “still may want to watch old tapes some day”
- People will keep their cassette players, and DVD players, even as they buy a new MP3 player because they will want to listen to the purchased collections
Actually, once someone adopts the new solution, they rapidly find no need for the old solution. It goes to the closet, and then the trash, quickly. And from a market perspective, once a third to a half the customers quit using a product it will disappear from use almost overnight. From that perspective, those who depend upon traditional land line phones have plenty to worry about. Because we’re near a third. And smart phones keep adding more capability every month – the iPhone now has almost 300,000 apps, and Android phones have over 100,000! It’s easy to see where the functionality, ease of use and ubiquitousness of mobile phones could make the old land line a waste of money within just 24 months!
So, what will happen to bill collectors and political phone ads (robocalls), when we quit using land lines? Along with the loss of land lines is the loss of the traditional phone book to find people. When will the cost of maintaining the poles and lines become so high, relative to the number of users, that we simply take them down to recycle the material? Lots of things change when growth begins to decline for land-lines, causing the decline to happen more quickly. And changing how we all get things done – as consumers and as businesses. Are you prepared?
The tendency is to think change will happen slowly. It doesn’t. When markets shift it happens quickly. Much more quickly than the entrenched competitor expects. The “experts” always say the demand for the old will last much longer than happens. He hopes to have a long life, clipping coupons, across a “maturing” market. Instead, demand falls rapidly and remaining competitors go into price wars trying to stay alive – hoping the market will some day return to the old way of doing things. Those who didn’t anticipate the shift rapidly run out of cash, and fail.
Are you ready for impending market shifts? How prepared are you for a world where
- We don’t print anything, because everyone has some kind of on-line digital document reader. Not just books and magazines, but user instructions, warranty info, etc.
- We don’t need cash because we can Paypal transact anything using our smartphone
- Doctors can monitor all your vital statistics real time, remotely, 24x7x365. Manufacturers can monitor use of their products 24x7x365
- So much retail is on-line that the amount of retail floor space declines 40%
- You can regrow a finger, or organ, if it is damaged
- Television and radio aren’t serially broadcast, you organize what you want when you want it. There are no “commercials” in content delivery
- The primary way of communicating with friends and colleagues is Facebook and Twitter – forget text except for only very private communications
by Adam Hartung | Aug 19, 2010 | Current Affairs, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
Summary:
- By 2015 or 2020 cash, checks, debit and credit cards could disappear
- Smartphones are positioned to eliminate old financial transaction tools, as well as land line phone service and PCs
- All businesses will have to make changes to deal with new forms of payment processing, and early adopters will likely gain an advantage with customes
- There will likely be some big winners and big losers from this transition
Can you imagine a world with no cash? It could happen soon, and how will it affect your business?
Bloomberg.com headlined “AT&T, Verizon to Target Visa, Mastercard with Smartphones.” The business idea is to replace your Visa and Mastercard with a smartphone app that acts as your debit and/or credit card. Doing this makes it faster and easier for smartphone users to place transactions – online or in person – without even bothering with a card or any other physical artifact.
This is a big deal, because according to Mediapost.com “Smartphones Nearly 20% of All Phones Sold.” So smartphones are starting to be everywhere, and at current rates will replace old mobile phones in just a couple of years. They are increasingly replacing traditional land-line service as headlined in DailyMarkets.com, “Cell Phone Only Use Hits New High of 24.5% in U.S.” People are abandoning the historical land-line telephone.
The traditional “phone company” and its services are rapidly disappearing. After all the effort Southwestern Bell put in to recreating the old “ma bell” of AT&T, it now looks like that entire business is in decline and likely to become about as common as CB or portable AM radios. What is the future of AT&T and Verizon if they front-end Discover as the payment processor? Will these companies transition to become something very different than their past, and if so what will that be? Or will they be an early proponent for change but let the business value go to others – as they did in mobile phones, ISDN and other internet connectivity as well as cable entertainment?
Mediapost.com also reports “PayPal Making Micropayments a Reality.” Which gives us the last piece of the puzzle to just about guarantee old payment methods are likely to be gone by 2020 (possibly earlier – 2015?). People are giving up old land-line telecom for mobile, and mobile is rapidly becoming all smartphones. Smartphones are getting apps allowing them to conduct financial transactions without the need of a credit card, debit card or (going ultra low-tech) check (no printer needed – lol – which has to be a concern for companies like Zebra that make the printers). In fact, you can even make all kinds of payments, even really small ones under $1 – not just big ones – using your cell phone by opening a Paypal account. What you can easily see is a future where you don’t need a wallet at all. Everything you’ll need for financial transactions will be on your smartphone. (How much you want to bet somebody will figure out how to put your driver’s license on the smartphone too?)
Ultra convenient, don’t you think? You won’t need a credit card, or any other card. You won’t need a PC to do your on-line banking. You won’t need cash for small purchases – you can even do garage sale transactions or buy gum using your smartphone. And there’s sure to be an app that will consolidate all your payments and set up to automatically do transactions (like your mortgage or car lease) without you even having to do anything. And all from your smartphone. No more wallet, no more PC, no more coins or bills in your pocket.
So, what happens to cash registers, and the folks that make them? No registers in restaurants or hotels? What happens to desk clerks in hotels – will they be necessary? What about cashiers in retail stores – any need? Will banks have any need for a local branch? Why would ATMs exist? Quite literally a raft of companies would be affected that deal in the handling of transactions – from Visa and Mastercard to IBM and Diebold. Even those little printers in cabs could disappear as your phone now pays the cabbie directly what the meter requires. You could even pay modern parking meters with your smartphone!! What happens to companies that make mens and women’s wallets? Will purses and clutches disappear from style? How much easier will it be for the IRS to track the income of people that have historically been in cash jobs?
Do your scenarios of 2015 include this kind of change in payments? Should it? What will be the impact on your bank? On your credit card supplier? Will your customers want to change how they pay? How will you need to change your order-to-cash process? Are you ready to be an early adopter, thus aiding revenue generation? Or will you let others steal sales by moving quickly to these modern payment systems?
There’s precious little that’s more important in business than collecting the money. A new set of technologies are sure to be changing how that happens. Will you leverage this to your advantage, or will your competitors?
