by Adam Hartung | Jul 28, 2011 | Books, Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, eBooks, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Television, Web/Tech
“It’s easier to succeed in the Amazon than on the polar tundra” Bruce Henderson, famed founder of The Boston Consulting Group, once told me. “In the arctic resources are few, and there aren’t many ways to compete. You are constantly depleting resources in life-or-death struggles with competitors. Contrarily, in the Amazon there are multiple opportunities to grow, and multiple ways to compete, dramatically increasing your chances for success. You don’t have to fight a battle of survival every day, so you can really grow.”
Today, Amazon(.com) is the place to be. As the financial markets droop, fearful about the economy and America’s debt ceiling “crisis,” Amazon is achieving its highest valuation ever. While the economy, and most companies, struggle to grow, Amazon is hitting record growth:
Source: BusinessInsider.com
Sales are up 50% versus last year! The result of this impressive sales growth has been a remarkable valuation increase – comparable to Apple!
- Since 2009, valuation is up 5.5x
- Over 5 years valuation is up 8x
- Over the last decade Amazon’s value has risen 15x
How did Amazon do this? Not by “sticking to its knitting” or being very careful to manage its “core.” In 2001 Amazon was still largely an on-line book seller.
The company’s impressive growth has come by moving far from its “core” into new markets and new businesses – most far removed from its expertise. Despite its “roots” and “DNA” being in U.S. books and retailing, the company has pioneered off-shore businesses and high-tech products that help customers take advantage of big trends.
Amazon’s earnings release provided insight to its fantastic growth. Almost 50% of revenues lie outside the U.S. Traditional retailers such as WalMart, Target, Kohl’s, Sears, etc. have struggled in foreign markets, and blamed poor performance on weak infrastructure and complex legal/tax issues. But where competitors have seen obstacles, Amazon created opportunity to change the way customers buy, and change the industry using its game-changing technology and capabilities. For its next move, according to Silicon Alley Insider, “Amazon is About to Invade India,” a huge retail market, in an economy growing at over 7%/year, with rising affluence and spendable income – but almost universally overlooked by most retailers due to weak infrastructure and complex distribution.
Amazon’s remarkable growth has occurred even though its “core” business of books has been declining – rather dramatically – the last decade. Book readership declines have driven most independents, and large chains such as B. Dalton and more recently Borders, out of business. But rather than use this as an excuse for weak results, Amazon invested heavily in the trends toward digitization and mobility to launch the wildly successful Kindle e-Reader. Today about half of all Amazon book sales are digital, creating growth where most competitors (hell-bent on trying to defend the old business) have dealt with stagnation and decline.
Amazon did this without a background as a technology company, an electronics company, or a consumer goods company. Additionally, Amazon invested in Kindle – and is now developing a tablet – even as these products cannibalized the historically “core” paper-based book sales. And Amazon has pursued these market shifts, even though these new products create a significant threat to Amazon’s largest traditional suppliers – book publishers.
Rather than trying to defend its old core business, Amazon has invested heavily in trends – even when these investments were in areas where Amazon had no history, capability or expertise!
Amazon has now followed the trends into a leading position delivering profitable “cloud” services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) generated $500M revenue last year, is reportedly up 50% to $750M this year, and will likely hit $1B or more before next year. In addition to simple data storage Amazon offers cloud-based Oracle database services, and even ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions from SAP. In cloud computing services Amazon now leads historically dominant IT services companies like Accenture, CSC, HP and Dell. By offering solutions that fulfill the emerging trends, rather than competing head-to-head in traditional service areas, Amazon is growing dramatically and avoiding a gladiator war. And capturing big sales and profits as the marketplace explodes.
Amazon created 5,300 U.S. jobs last quarter. Organic revenue growth was 44%. Cash flow increased 25%. All because the company continued expanding into new markets, including not only new retail markets, and digital publishing, but video downloads and television streaming – including making a deal to deliver CBS shows and archive.
Amazon’s willingness to go beyond conventional wisdom has been critical to its success. GeekWire.com gives insight into how Amazon makes these critical resource decisions in “Jeff Bezos on Innovation” (taken from comments at a shareholder meeting June 7, 2011):
- “you just have to place a bet. If you place enough of those bets, and if you place them early enough, none of them are ever betting the company”
- “By the time you are betting the company, it means you haven’t invented for too long”
- “If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to the point where you really need to bet the whole company”
- “We are planting more seeds…everything we do will not work…I am never concerned about that”
- “my mind never lets me get in a place where I think we can’t afford to take these bets”
- “A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are, is that we are willing to invent”
If you want to succeed, there are ample lessons at Amazon. Be willing to enter new markets, be willing to experiment and learn, don’t play “bet the company” by waiting too long, and be willing to invest in trends – especially when existing competitors (and suppliers) are hesitant.
by Adam Hartung | Jul 20, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Web/Tech
“Buy Low, Sell High” was an industrial era investor expression. Before we shifted into an information economy, investors were admonished to invest along with economic cycles, buying during recessions, selling during booms.
In today’s information economy it’s not nearly so simple. While growth occurs, companies falter and disappear (Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, for example.) Meanwhile, during bad economic periods there are flourishing growth companies.
Company performance today has much more to do with whether the company’s products and services are aligned with trends, and market shifts created by trends, than the overall economy. When revenues first show signs fo faltering, often the company fails completely, unable to react to market shifts. Competitors quickly steal customers, revenue and precious cash flow. Investors frequently have little warning, or time, before company value slides into the oblivion, leaving them with negative returns.
So now it’s more important to look at trends in where product and service markets are headed than overall economic conditions. The economy won’t save a company that’s against the trend – or hurt a company that’s delivering the market trend.
Yahoo caught the early trend toward internet usage. In the early years people didn’t quite know what to do on the internet, so content providers, aggregators, and ability to search were valuable. People like Yahoo because it gave them what they wanted, and the company flourished as it became the home page for over 80% of internet users. Advertisers loved the user base, so they bought ads.
Then the market shifted. Users gained more experience, and didn’t need the aggregation function Yahoo provided. Increasingly they wanted to find answers themselves, making the quality of search more important than content. A white page with a simple box (Google) that did great searching across the entire web overtook Yahoo’s content. And, as time progressed people started using the internet as a primary location for socially connecting with friends and colleagues, making the content aggregation even less valuable. Time spent on Yahoo as a percent of time on-line began dropping:
Source: Business Insider
But although this trend began in 2009, and was clear in 2010, Yahoo’s CEO kept pushing the same business model. She missed the trend.
The market kept right on shifting, and by 2011, Yahoo is in a very bad competitive position:
Source: Business Insider
So, nobody should be surprised that revenue would fall – correct? It’s not that the folks at Yahoo are wasteful, or not working hard. They simply are becoming out of step with the market trend. The result one would expect is worsening results in the old, “core” business – and that’s exactly what is happening:
Source: Business Insider
Meanwhile, where the eyeballs go is where the display ad revenues go as well. And with the trends, that means we would expect display ad revenu growth to move away from Yahoo – as it has done:
Source: Business Insider
So yesterday when Yahoo announced sales and earnings, it was a disappointment. What increase Yahoo had in fast growing display ads (5%) was insufficient to cover the decline in search ads (down 15%). Clearly, Yahoo missed the market shift. But, the CEO did not admit that the business model was ineffective (as results indicate.) Rather, she said the company needed more salespeople!
This proclivity to look inward, as if working harder, faster and better would “fix” Yahoo, defies the reality that the company is no longer competitive given where the market is headed. Ms. Bartz can’t succeed by trying to defend and extend the traditional Yahoo business model. Yahoo doesn’t need more salespeople, it needs an entirely different business!
Source: Business Insider
Alternatively, Apple exemplifies the other side of this coin. I have been an unabashed bull on Apple for months. Why? Because it does create solutions tightly linked to market trends. People, as consumers or in business, demand more mobility. And Apple’s products deliver that mobility more seamlessly and effectively than any other solution provider.
Apple could well have kept itself focused on Mac sales. Had it done so, it would likely be out of business today. Instead, Apple focused the bulk of its development on delivering products that fulfilled trends. The result has been expansion into new markets, which have delivered massive revenue gains.
Source: Business Insider
Last quarter Apple sold more iPhones and even more iPad tablets (9.25million units, $6.1B) than it sold Macs (~4 million units, $5.1B.) The old business has been replaced (cannibalized) by new, growing businesses that support the market trend. iPads are now 11% of the PC business overall, and growing fast as they obsolete PCs. Combined, iPads and Macs sold 13.25 million “computing devices” which would make it second in the world, behind only HP (15.3million PCs.) Bigger than Dell, for example, that has stuck to its “core” PC business.
Because Apple is all about delivering on trends, there’s really no reason to think revenues, and profits, won’t continue growing. The shift to mobility has just taken hold, and there are legions of people still without an apps-powerful smartphone (lots of Blackberry customers out there to shift.) The shift to tablets has just started. As these trends continue, Apple is continuing to develop new solutions that keep it ahead of competitors.
Where Yahoo’s CEO wants to add more salespeople, in hopes she can push outdated products, Mr. Jobs said in the earnings call yesterday “Right now we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS5 and iCloud to our users this fall.” Yahoo is trying to do more of what it always did, as the market moves away. While Apple keeps its collective management eyes on the future – and where the market is headed – to constantly bring new solutions that deliver on the trends.
Sell Yahoo, if you haven’t already. And buy Apple. It’s all about investing with the trends.
Note: update on “Is Cisco a Value Stock? Skip It.” In the month since publishing that blog (6/23/11) Cisco has demonstrated that it is running headlong from the rapids of growth into the swamp of stagnation. Not only has it been killing off new products, but as it announced weak results the CEO has taken to a massive cutback. 11,500 employees are being laid off, or sent off to work for other companies as facilities are being sold to a Chinese company.
Worse, the CEO is now stooping to financial machinations in order to make the future look better. According to HuffingtonPost.com Cisco is taking a massive $1.3B charge. This allows Cisco to write off various costs that are old, current and even future to the current P&L. This will inflate future earnings, regardless of actual performance, while deflating current results. The net impact is P&L manipulation designed to make the company – quarter over quarter or year over year – look better than it is actually performing. Transparency is being intentionally muddled, to hide the company’s inability to provide solutions delivering on market trends.
Cisco shows all the signs of a company in a growth stall. Unable to shift with market trends, it is now shedding products, employees and assets in an effort to pad the P&L. It is “reorganizing” the company, rather than linking to market needs. Remember that fewer than 7% of companies that slip into a growth stall ever successfully maintain an ongoing 2% growth rate. Because they are focused on internal issues, and financial management – rather being clearly focused market trends.
Don’t just skip buying Cisco – if you are a shareholder, SELL!
And buy Apple.
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 8, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
Apple’s market value has struggled in 2011. When I ask people why, the overwhelming top 3 responses are:
- How can a company nearly bankrupt 10 years ago become the second most valuable company on the equity market?
- Apple has had a long run, isn’t it about to end?
- How can Apple be worth so much, when it has no “real” assets?
I’m struck by how these questions are based on looking backward, rather than looking into the future.
Firstly, it doesn’t matter where you start, but rather how well you run the race. What happened in the past is just that, the past. Changing technologies, products, solutions, customers, business practices, economic conditions and competitors cause markets to shift. When they shift, competitor positions change. The strong can remain strong, but it’s also possible for company’s fortunes to change drastically. Apple has taken advantage of market shifts – even created them – in order to change its fortunes. What investors should care about is the future.
Which leads to the second question; and the answer that there’s no reason to think Apple’s growth run will end any time soon. Perhaps Apple won’t maintain 100% annual growth forever, but it doesn’t have to grow at that rate to be a very valuable investment. And worth a lot more than the current value. That Apple can grow at 20% (or a lot more) for another several years is a very high probability bet:
- Apple’s growth markets are young, and the markets themselves are growing fast. Apple is not in a gladiator war to maintain old customers, but instead is creating new customers for digital/mobile entertainment, smartphones and mobile tablets. Because it is in high growth markets it’s odds of maintaining company growth are very good. Just look at the recent performance of iPad tablet sales, a market most analysts predicted would struggle against cheaper netbooks. Quarterly sales are blowing past early 2010 estimates of annual sales, and are 250% over last year (chart source Silicon Alley Insider):
- Apple’s products continue to improve. Apple is not resting upon its past success, but rather keeps adding new capability to its old offerings in order to migrate customers to its new platforms. At the recent developer’s conference,for example, Apple described how it was adding Twitter integration for enhanced social media to its platforms and introducing its own messenger service, bypassing 3rd party services (like SMS) and replacing competitive products like RIM’s BBM.
- Further, Apple is introducing new solutions like iCloud (TechStuffs.net “Apple iCloud Key Features and Price) offering free wireless synching between Apple platforms, free and seamless back-ups, and the ability to operate without a PC (even Mac flavor) if you want to be mobile-only (“The 10 Huge Things Apple Just Revealed” BusinessInsider.com). These solutions keep expanding the market for Apple sales into new markets – such as small businesses (Entrepreneur.com “What Lion Means for Small Business“) as it solves unmet needs ignored by historically powerful solutions providers, or offered at far too high a price.
Thirdly, investors wonder how a company can be worth so much without much in the way of “real” assets. The answer lies in understanding how the business world has shifted. In an industrial economy real assets – like land, building, machinery – was greatly valued. They were the means of production, and wealth generation. But we have transitioned to the information economy. Now the information around a business, and providing digital solutions, are worth considerably more than “real” assets.
How many closed manufacturing plants, retail stores or restaurants have you seen? How many real estate developers have shuttered? Contrarily, what’s the value of customer lists and customer access at companies like Amazon.com, GroupOn, Linked-In, Twitter and Facebook in today’s information economy? What’s the demand for printed books, and what’s the demand for ebooks (such as Kindle?) “Real” asset values are tumbling because they are easy to obtain, and owning them produces precious little value, or profit, in today’s globally competitive economy.
This same week that Apple announced a barrage of revenue-generating upgrades and new products asset rich Wal-Mart made an announcement as well. After a decade in which Apple’s value skyrocketed to over $330B (More than Microsoft and Intel Combined by the way), Wal-Mart’s value has gone nowhere, mired around $185B. Wal-Mart’s answer is to buy back it’s shares. The Board has authorized continuing and expanding a massive share buyback program of literally 1 million shares/day – 10% of all shares traded daily! The amount allocated is 1/6th the entire market cap! At this rate 24x7WallStreet.com headlined “Wal-Mart’s Buyback Plan Grows & Grows.. Could Take Itself Private by 2025.”
Share buybacks produce NO VALUE. They don’t produce any revenue, or profit. All they do is take company cash, and spend it to buy company shares. The asset (cash) is spent (removed) in the process of buying shares, which are then removed from the company’s equity. The company actually gets smaller, because it has less assets and less equity. (Compared to LInked-In, for example, that grew larger by selling shares and increasing its cash assets.) Over time the cash disappears, and the equity disappears. Eventually, you have no company left! Stock buybacks are an end of lifecycle investment, and should trigger great fear in investors as they demonstrate management has lost the ability to identify high-yield growth opportunities.
Wal-Mart is steeped in assets. It has land, buildings, stores, shelves, warehouses, trucks, huge computer systems. But these assets simply don’t produce a lot of profit, as competitors are squeezing margins every year. And there’s not much growth, because doing more of what it always did isn’t really wanted by a lot more people. So it has gobs of assets. So what? The assets simply aren’t worth a lot when the market doesn’t need any more retail stores; especially boring ones with limited product selection, limited imagination and nothing but “low price.”
Assets aren’t the “store of value” analysts gave them in an industrial economy, and it’s time we realize investing in “assets” is fraught with risk. Assets, like homes and autos have shown us, can go down in value even easier and faster than they can go up. Global competitors can match the assets, and drive down prices using cheap labor and operating by less onerous standards. In today’s market, assets are as likely to be an anchor on value as an asset.
I started 2011 saying Apple was a screaming buy. Today that’s even more true than it was then. Apple’s revenues, profits and cash flow are up. Sales in existing lines are still profitably growing at double (or triple) digit rates, and enhancements keep Apple in front of competitors. Meanwhile Apple is entering new markets every quarter, with solutions meeting existing, unmet needs. Because value has been stagnant, the value (price) to revenue, earnings and cash flow have all declined, making Apple cheaper than ever. It’s time to invest based on looking to the future, and not the past. Doing so means you buy Apple today, and start dumping asset intensive stocks like Wal-mart.
Update 12 June, 2011 – Chart from SeekingAlpha.com. Apple’s cash hoard grows faster than its valuation. When a company can grow cash flow and profits faster than revenues – and it’s doubling revenues – that’s a screaming buy!
by Adam Hartung | Jun 3, 2011 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, In the Rapids, In the Swamp, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Lock-in, Web/Tech
Were you ever told “pretty is as pretty does?” This homily means “don’t just look at the surface, it’s the underlying qualities that matter.” When I read analyst reviews of companies I’m often struck by how fascinated they are with the surface, and how weakly they seem to understand the underlying markets. Financials are a RESULT of management’s ability to provide competitive solutions, and no study of financials will give investors a true picture of management or the company’s future prospects.
The good:
Everyone should own Apple. The list of its market successes are clear, and well detailed at SeekingAlpha.com “Apple: The Most Undervalued Equity in Techdom.” The reason you should own Apple isn’t its past performance, but rather that the company has built a management team completely focused on the future. Apple is using scenario planning to create solutions that fit the way people want to work and live – not how they did things in the past.
And Apple managers are obsessive about staying ahead of competitors with better solutions that introduce new technologies, and higher levels of user productivity. By constantly being willing to disrupt the old ways of doing things, Apple keeps bringing better solutions to market via its ongoing investment in teams dedicated to developing new solutions and figuring out how they will adapt to fit unmet needs. And this isn’t just a “Steve Jobs thing” as the company’s entire success formula is built on the ability to plan for the future, and outperform competitors. We are seeing this now with the impending launch of iCloud (Marketwatch.com “Could Apple Still Surprise at Its Conference?“)
For nearly inexplicable reasons, many investors (and analysts) have not been optimistic about Apple’s future price. The company’s earnings have grown so fast that a mere fear of a slow-down has caused investors to retrench, expecting some sort of inexplicable collapse. Analysts look for creative negatives, like a recent financial analyst told me “Apple is second in value only to ExxonMobile, and I’m just not sure how to get my mind around that. Is it possible growth could be worth that much? I thought value was tied to assets.”
Uh, yes, growth is worth that much! Apple’s been growing at 100%. Perhaps it won’t continue to grow at that breakneck pace (or perhaps it will, there’s no competitor right now blocking its path), but even if it slows by 75% we’re still talking 25% growth – and that creates enormous value (compounded, 25% growth doubles your investment in 3 years.) When you find profitable growth from a company designed to repeat itself with new market introductions, you have a beautiful thing! And that’s a good investment.
Similarly, investors should really like Netflix. Netflix did what almost nobody does. It overcame fears of cannibalizing its base business (renting DVDs via mail-order) and introduced a streaming download service. Analysts decried this move, fearing that “digital sales would be far lower than physical sales.” But Netflix, with its focus firmly on the future and not the past, recognized that emerging competitors (like Hulu) were quickly changing the game. Their objective had to be to go where the market was heading, rather than trying to preserve an historical market destined to shrink. That sort of management thinking is a beautiful thing, and it has paid off enormously for Netflix.
Of course, those who look only at the surface worry about the pricing model at Netflix. They mostly worry that competitors will gore the Netflix digital ox. But what we can see is that the big competitors these analysts trot out for fear mongering – Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Comcast – are locked-in to historical approaches, and not aggressively taking on Netflix. When you look at who has the #1 market position, the eyes and ears of customers, the subscriber/customer base and the delivery solution customers love you have to be excited about Netflix. After all, they are the leaders in a market that we know is going to shift their way – downloads. Sort of reminds you of Apple when they brought out the iPod and iTunes, doesn’t it?
The bad:
Google has been a great company. The internet wouldn’t be the internet if we didn’t have Google, the search engine that made the web easy and fast to use, plus gave us the ads making all of that search (and lots of content) free. But, the company has failed to deliver on its own innovations. Android is a huge market success, but unfortunately lock-in to its old mindset led Google to give the product away – just a tad underpriced. Other products, like Wave were great, but there hasn’t been enough White Space available for the products to develop into commercial successes. And we’ve all recently read how it happened that Google missed the emergence of social media, now positioning Facebook as a threaten to their long-term viability (AllThingsD.com “Schmidt Says Google’s Social Networking Problem is His Fault.“)
Chrome, Chromebooks and Google Wallet could be big winners. And there’s a new CEO in place who promises to move Google beyond its past glory. But these are highly competitive markets, Google isn’t first, it’s technology advantages aren’t as clear cut as in the old search days (PCWorld.com “Google Wallet Isn’t the Only Mobile POS Tool.”) Whether Google will regain its past glory depends on whether the company can overcome its dedication to its old success formula and actually disrupt its internal processes enough to take the lead with disruptive marketplace products.
Cisco is in a similar situation. A great innovator who’s products put us all on the web, and made us wi-fi addicted. But markets are shifting as people change their needs for costly internal networks, moving to the cloud, and other competitors (like NetApp) are the game changers in the new market. Cisco’s efforts to enter new markets have been fragmented, poorly managed, and largely ineffective as it spent too much energy focused on historical markets. Emblematic was the abandoned effort to enter consumer markets with the Flip camera, where its inability to connect with fast shifting market needs led to the product line shutdown and a loss of the entire investment (BusinessInsider.com “Cisco Kills the Flip Camera.”)
Cisco’s value is tied not to its historical market, but its ability to develop new ones. Even when they likely cannibalize old products. HIstorically Cisco did this well. But as customers move to the cloud it’s still not clear what Cisco will do to remain an industry leader. Whether Google and Cisco will ever be good investments again doesn’t look too good, today. Maybe. But only if they realign their investments and put in place teams dedicated to new, growth markets.
The ugly:
Another homily goes “beauty may be on the surface, but ugly goes clear to the bone.” Meaning? For something to be ugly, it has to be deeply flawed inside. And that’s the situation at Research in Motion and Microsoft. Optimistic investors describe both of these companies as potential “value stocks” that will find a way to “protect the installed base as an economic recovery develops” and “sell their products cheaply in developing countries that can’t afford new solutions” eventually leading to high dividend payouts as they milk old businesses. Right. That won’t happen, because these companies are on a self-destructive course to preserve lost markets which will eat up resources and leave them shells of their former selves.
Both companies were wildly successful. Both once had near-monopolies in their markets. But in both cases, the organizations became obsessed with defending and extending sales to their “core” or “base” customers using “core” technologies and products. This internal focus, and desire to follow best practices, led them to overspending on what worked in the past, while the market shifted away from them.
At RIMM the market has moved from enterprise servers and secure enterprise applications to local apps that access data via the cloud. People have moved from PCs to smartphones (and tablets) that allow them to do even more than they could do on old devices, and RIM’s devotion to its historical business base caused the company to miss the shift. Blackberry and Playbook have 1/10th the apps of leaders Apple and Android (at best) and are rapidly being competitively outrun.
Likewise, Microsoft has offered the market nothing new when it comes to emerging markets and unmet user needs as it has invested billions of dollars trying to preserve its traditional PC marketplace. Vista, Windows 7 and Office 2010 all missed the fact that users were going off the PC, and toward new solutions for personal productivity. Now the company is trying to play catch-up with its Skype acquisition, Nokia partnership (where sales are in a record, multi-year slide; SeekingAlpha.com “Nokia Deluged with Downgrades“) and a planned launch of Windows 8. Only they are against ferocious competition that has developed an enormous market lead, using lower cost technologies, and keep offering innovations that are driving additional market shift.
Companies that plan for the future, keep their eyes firmly focused on unmet needs and alternative competitors, and that accept and implement disruptions via internal teams with permission to be game-changers are the winners. They are good investments.
Big winners that keep seeking new opportunities, but fall into over-reliance (and focus) on historical markets and customers can move from being good investments to bad ones. They have to change their planning and competitive analysis, and start attacking old notions about their business to free up resources for doing new things. They can return to greatness, but only if they recognize market shifts and move aggressively to develop solutions for emerging needs in new markets.
It gets ugly when companies lose their ability to see external market shifts because they are inwardly focused (inside their organizations, and inside their historical customer base or supply chain.) Their market sensing disappears, and their investments become committed on trying to defend old businesses in the face of changes far beyond their control. Their internal biases cause reduction of shareholder value as they spend money on acquisitions and new products that have negative rates of return in their overly-optimistic effort to regain past glory. Those situations almost never return to former beauty, as ugly internal processes lock them into repeating past behaviors even when its clear they need an entirely new approach to succeed.
by Adam Hartung | Apr 29, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
CIO Magazine today published my latest article for IT professionals “Why You Should Stop Worrying and Let End Users Have iPads.” (note: free site registration may be required to read the full article)
The editors at CIO agreed with me that a big change is happening in “enterprise IT.” User technology is now so cheap, and good, that employees no longer depend upon corporate IT to provide them with their productivity tools. When you can buy a smartphone for $100, and a tablet for $500, increasingly users are happy to supply their own, private, productivity tools rather than try using something they find larger, heavier and harder to use from their boss — and also something which they’ve been told for years should not have personal items on it.
The serious impact is that increasingly the users feel “burdened” by corporate IT. They become less accessible as they leave the company laptop at work – and shut off the company Blackberry after work hours. They complain about the inefficiency of corporate tools, while using personal phones and tablets to do internet searches, access networks for fast info sharing (Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in), and generally find greatest productivity by ignoring technology supplied by employers. Often tehnology that is incredibly expensive.
Leading companies are taking advantage of this trend, and supplying the latest devices to employees. They recognize that greatest good comes not from “controlling” employee technology use. Rather, productivity is greatly enhanced by encouraging employees to take advantage of newest technology in the course of their work. Thus, leaders are providing iPhones and iPads, and giving access to Facebook and YouTube through the company network.
The world of IT shifts fast. Changes in IT have often seperated winners from losers. IT leaders have to change their mindsets if they want to help their companies profitably grow. And the first step is giving users technology they want, rather than technology they too often despise.
You can also access this article by clicikng on links to the following journals:
I look forward to your opinion about this topic! Do you think IT departmernts are slow to react to new tools? Do you think the new tools are “enterprise ready?” Do you think the advantages of newer techbnology outweigh potential IT risks? Drop comments here, or on the article pages! Love to hear what others think
by Adam Hartung | Apr 26, 2011 | Defend & Extend, In the Rapids, In the Swamp, Innovation, Leadership, Lock-in, Web/Tech
Summary:
- Everyone discriminates in hiring – just some is considered bad, and some considered good
- Only “good discrimination” inevitably leads to homogeneity and “group think” leaving the business vulbnerable to market shifts
- Efforts to defend & extend the historical success formula moves beyond hiring to include using internal bias to favor improvement projects and disfavor innovations
- Amazon has grown significantly more than Wal-Mart, and it’s value has quadrupled while Wal-mart’s has been flat, because it has moved beyond its original biases
The long list of people attacking Wal-Mart includes a class-action law suit between former female workers and their employer. The plaintiffs claim Wal-Mart systematically was biased, via its culture, to pay women less and limit their promotion opportunities. The case is prompting headlines like BNet.com‘s “Does Your Company Help You Discriminate?”
Actually, all cultures – and hiring programs – are designed to discriminate. It’s just that some discrimination is legal, and some is not. At Google it’s long been accepted that the bias is toward quant jocks and those with highest IQs. That’s not illegal. Saying that men, or white people, or Christians make better employees is illegal. But there is risk in all hiring bias – even the legal kind. To avoid the illegal discrimination, its smarter to overcome the “natural bias” that cultures create for hiring. And the good news is that this is better for the business’s growth and rate of return!
Successful organizations build a profile of “who did well around here – and why” as they grow. It doesn’t take long until that profile is what they seek. The downside is that quickly there’s not a lot of heterogeneity in the hiring – or the workforce. That leads to “group think,” which reinforces “not invented here.” Everyone becomes self-assured of their past success, and believes that if they keep doing “more of the same” the future will work out fine. Whether Wal-Mart’s hiring biases were legal – or not – it is clear that the group think created at Wal-Mart has kept it from innovating and moving into new markets with more growth.
Markets shift. New products, technologies and business practices emerge. New competitors figure out ways of providing new solutions. Customers drift toward new offerings, and growth slows. Unfortunately, bias keeps the early winner from accepting this market shift – so the company falls into serious growth troubles trying to do more, better, faster, cheaper of what worked before. Look at Dell, still trying to compete in PCs with its supply chain focus long after competitors have matched their pricing and started offering superior customer service and other advantages. Meanwhile, the market growth has moved away from PCs into products (tablets, smartphones) Dell doesn’t even sell.
Wal-Mart excels at its success formula of big, boring, low price stores. And its bias is to keep doing more of the same. Only, that’s not where the growth is in retailing any longer. The market for “cheap” is pretty well saturated, and now filled with competitors that go one step further being cheap (like Dollar General,) or largely match the low prices while offering better store experience (like Target) or better selection and varied merchandise (like Kohl’s). Wal-Mart is stuck, when it needs to shift. But its bias toward “doing what Sam Walton did that made us great” has now made Wal-Mart the target for every other retailer, and stymied Wal-Mart’s growth.
A powerful sign of status quo bias shows itself when leaders and managers start overly relying on “how we’ve done things here” and “the numbers.” The former leads to accepting recommendations fro hiring and promotion based upon similarity with previous “winners.” Investment opportunities to defend and extend what’s always been done sail through reviews, because everyone understands the project and everyone believes that the results will appear.
Nearly all studies of operational improvement projects show that returns rarely achieve the anticipated outcomes. Because these projects reinforce the status quo, they are assumed to be highly accurate projections. But planned efficiences do not emerge. Headcount reductions do not happen. Unanticipated costs emerge. And, most typically, competitors copy the project and achieve the same results, leading to price reductions across the board benefitting customers rather than company profits.
Doing more of the same is easily approved and rarely questioned – whether hiring, or investing. And if things don’t work out as expected results are labeled “business necessity” and everyone remains happy they made the original decision, even if it did nothing for market share, or profit improvement. Or perhaps turns out to have been illegal (remember Enron and Worldcom?)
To really succeed it is important we overcome biases. Look no further than Amazon. Amazon could have been an on-line book retailer. But by overcoming early biases, in hiring and new projects, Amazon has grown more than Wal-Mart the last decade – and has a much brighter future. Amazon now leads in a large number of retail segments, far beyond books. It has products which allow anyone to take almost any product to market – using the Amazon on-line tools, as well as inventory management.
And in publishing Amazon has become a powerhouse by helping self-published authors find distribution which was before unavailable, giving us all a much larger variety of book products. More recently Amazon pioneered e-Readers with Kindle, developing the technology as well as the inventory to make Kindle an enormous success. Simultaneously Amazon now offers a series of technical products providing companies access to the cloud for data and applications.
Where most companies would say “that’s not our business” Amazon has taken the approach of “if people want it, why don’t we supply it?” Where most organizations use numbers to kill projects – saying they are too risky or too small to matter or too low on “risk adjusted” rate of return Amazon creates a team, experiments and obtains real market information. Instead of worrying whether or not the initial project is a success or failure, market input is treated as learning and used to adapt. By continuously looking for new opportunities, and pushing those opportunities, Amazon keeps growing.
Every business develops a bias. Overcoming that bias is critical to success. From hiring to decision making, internal status quo police try to reinforce the bias and limit change. Often on the basis of “too much risk” or “too far from our core.” But that bias inevitably leads to stalled growth. Because new competitors never stop beating down rates of return on old success formulas, and markets never stop shifting.
Wal-Mart should look upon this lawsuit not as a need to defend and extend its past practices, but rather a wake-up call to be more open to diversity – in all aspects of its business. Wal-mart doesn’t need to win this lawsuit neary as badly as it needs to create an ability to adapt. Until then, I’d recommend investors sell Wal-Mart, and buy Amazon.com.
Chart of WMT stock performance compared to AMZN last 5 years (source Yahoo.com)
by Adam Hartung | Apr 11, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership
Today’s Guest Blog is provided by Mike Meikle. He offers some great insight to the declining value of manufacturing as producitivity continues to skyrocket, pushing all of us toward understanding and competing in markets where greater value lies in digital products rather than physical.
Summary
- Hyperdigitization is the economic shift toward “virtual” goods and services
- Manufacturing jobs have dropped 31 percent but output is at a near record $1.7 trillion.
- Economic output of Hyperdigitization is $2.9 trillion.
- Google, Facebook and GroupOn all have large revenue streams/valuations yet no physical product.
- Industrial Age economic model of static business models is rapidly fading.
- Organizations must release their innovative capabilities to survive and thrive.
Recently, I was engaged by ExecSense to give a Risk Management & Outsourcing Trends for 2011 webinar targeted for Risk Management executives. Since I only had an hour to cover a vast amount material, I could only briefly touch on some interesting topics. One of these was Hyperdigitization, a jargon-laden term that means economic output is moving toward “virtual” goods and services.
So how does hyperdigitization tie into outsourcing trends? As companies continue shift their business processes to outside service providers, firms will have to develop ways to protect their intellectual property and virtual output. Since intellectual property is data, risk managers will have to develop and monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Key Risk Indicators (KRI) to ensure their firm does not sacrifice their long-term competitive advantage for short-term cost savings. This penny-wise, pound-foolish strategy has been discussed previously by Mr. Hartung.
But before we dig further into explaining hyperdigitization, let us review an example of the current fading Industrial economic model. One of the chief laments heard throughout the Great Recession is that America doesn’t “make” anything anymore. Manufacturing jobs have left primarily to cheaper labor, less regulation, lower tax countries. Without construction jobs to fall back on, this has left a broad swath of the population unemployed. Unfortunately this high unemployment fallout is a result of our economic model shifting away from Industrial Age practices.
While the jobs may have left (down 31%) productivity boosts have pushed the U.S. manufacturing output to near record highs of 1.7 trillion dollars. We make more goods with less people due to technological advances. Contrary to the economic doomsayers this is a positive trend, one that has happened before (agrarian-based economy) and will undoubtedly happen again.
What does this hyperdigitization of economic output mean in real terms? Well, based on a Gartner report, about 20 percent of U.S. economic output in 2009 or 2.9 trillion dollars. That’s nearly double the U.S. manufacturing output. We are awash in virtual products and services. Think about Google alone. The company is worth $163 billion at last estimate and does not have one physical product.
Other examples are Facebook and GroupOn. Both are projected to be worth $65 billion and $25 billion respectively. Yet again, neither has a physical product. These three companies have based their business models on information arbitrage; the process of mining available data for new opportunities.
So where does all this intellectual property (data) that generates billions in profit come from? People, who are supported by a corporate culture that values innovation and measured risk taking.
As the global economy gets exponentially more competitive, organizations need to be fast, flexible and innovative; a near polar opposite of the Industrial Age business model. A large percentage of companies are still mired in outdated business practices that protect the status-quo (Extend & Defend), squash risk taking and stifle innovation. This has especially become prevalent in the era of downsizing culminating in the practices of the Great Recession.
In order to compete in an economy driven by hyperdigitization, the human capital of an organization has to be made a priority. Developed nation’s economies are shifting away from static business models that produce generic widgets and services. To thrive in the hyper competitive, constantly shifting global economy, organizations will have to create and promote a culture that emphasizes and values the Information Age success triumvirate of risk taking, innovation and rapid-execution.
Thanks Mike! Mike Meikle shares his insights at “Musings of a Corporate Consigliere” (http://mikemeikle.wordpress.com/). I hope you read more of his thoughts on innovation and corporate change at his blog site. I thank Mike for contributing this blog for readers of The Phoenix Principle today, and hope you’ve enjoyed his contribution to the discussion about innovation, strategy and market shifts.
If you would like to contribute a guest blog please send me an email. I’d be pleased to pass along additional viewpoints on wide ranging topics.
by Adam Hartung | Apr 7, 2011 | Defend & Extend, In the Rapids, In the Swamp, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
Most folks know that Apple is now worth more than Microsoft. Although few realize the huge difference. After years of dominating as the premier “PC” company, Microsoft is now worth only about 2/3 the value of Apple – $224B versus $310B this week (or, said differently, Apple is worth about 50% more than Microsoft.) Apple’s run by Microsoft the last year has been like a rock out of a slingshot. But that’s largely because Apple grew revenues almost 50% in fiscal 2009 and 2010, while Microsoft saw revenue decline 3% in 2009, and only grow 7% in 2010, putting revenues up a net 3% over the 2 years.
What few realize is how much Microsoft spent trying to grow, but failed. A look at 2009 R&D expenditures showed Microsoft outspent all tech competitors in its class – spending 8 times what Apple spent! 
Source: Silicone Alley Insider Chart of the Day from BusinessInsider.com
What did customers and investors receive for this whopping Microsoft spend? An updated operating system and set of office automation tools to run on existing products. Nothing that created new demand, or incremental sales. On the other hand, for its much lower spending Apple gave investors upgrades to iPods, the iPhone and the operating system for the later released iPad.
Simply put, Microsoft opened the check book and spent like crazy in its effort to defend its historical PC products business. And the cost was more than just dollars. That “focus” cost Microsoft its position in other growth markets; like smartphones. Few recall that as recently as 2008 Microsoft was the leading smartphone platform: 
In order to defend its “core” business, Microsoft under-invested in smartphones and over-invested in its historical personal computing products. Now, PC growth has stalled as people are switching to new products based on cloud computing – like smartphones and tablets.
Apple is cleaning up with its investments, while Microsoft is hoping it can catch up by enticing its former executive, now the CEO at Nokia, to revamp their line using the Windows Phone 7 operating system. Good luck, because the market is already way, way out front with Apple and Android products
That was the past. What we’d like to know is whether Apple will keep growing like crazy, and whether Microsoft will do what’s necessary to grow as well. And that’s where some recent announcements point out that Apple, quite simply, is better managed. So it will grow, and Microsoft won’t.
ZDNet reported on the “changing of the guard” at Apple in March. Due to its different investment approach, iOS is now bigger than the MacOS at Apple. The “legacy” product – that made Apple into a famous company in the 1980s – has been eclipsed by the new product. And the old technology leader is graciously moving on to do research in a scientific community, while Apple pours its resources into developing products for the future.
Don’t forget, the Lisa was a product that Steve Jobs personally took to market – yet didn’t succeed. He personally remained involved, converting Lisa into the wildly successful 1980s Mac (see AOL Small Business story on history of Lisa and Mac.) You gotta love it when that CEO, and his leadership team and all the managers, can transition their loyalty and put resources into the future product line in order to keep growing! MacOS is not dead, nor is it going to be devoid of resources. But the future of Apple lies in growing the new platform, and that is where the best talent and dollars are being spent.
Comparatively, Microsoft announced this week it was changing its Chief Marketing Officer (SeattlePI.com.) And, not surprisingly, they did NOT select someone with smartphone, tablet or even gaming expertise for the role. Instead of identifying a leader who is deep into understanding the growth markets, Microsoft appointed as the next CMO the fellow who had been responsible for selling – wait – guess – Office, Sharepoint, Exchange and the other historical, legacy Microsoft products. Those products which have had no growth – only maintenance sales. Instead of reaching into the future for its leadership, CEO Ballmer once again reached into the past.
If you ever wonder why Apple is worth so much more to investors than Microsoft, just think about this moment in the marketplace. Apple is investing its best talent and resources into new products in new markets that are demonstrating growth. Microsoft, struggling with its growth, keeps placing “old guard” leaders into top positions, attempting to defend the historical business – hoping to recapture the old glory.
Too bad the market has already shifted and doesn’t care what Microsoft thinks.
When it comes to networking, cloud computing and the future of how we all are going to be productive Microsoft just isn’t in the game. And its attempt to have a fast falling Nokia save it by distributing second rate mobile products that are late to market while iPhones and Androids keep extending their lead won’t make Microsoft great again. Especially when the leadership keeps wanting, in its heart, to sell more PCs.
Apple is just better managed, because it keeps looking to the future, while Microsoft simply can’t seem to get over its past. Good thing Steve Ballmer is already rich. Too bad all the Microsoft employees aren’t.
by Adam Hartung | Apr 1, 2011 | Current Affairs, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership, Openness, Transparency, Web/Tech
Summary:
- Google is locking-in on what it made successful
- But as technologies, and markets, change Google could be at risk of not keeping up
- Internal processes are limiting Google’s ability to adapt quickly
- Google needs to be better at creating and launching new projects that can expand its technology and market footprint in order to maintain long-term growth
Google has been a wild success. From nowhere Google has emerged as one of the biggest business winners at leveraging the internet. With that great success comes risk, and opportunity, as Larry Page resumes the CEO position this year.
Investors hope Google keeps finding new opportunities to grow, somewhat like Apple has done by moving into new markets with new solutions. Where Apple has built strong revenue streams from its device and app sales in multiple markets, Google hasn’t yet demonstrated that success. Despite the spectacular ramp-up in Android smartphone sales, Google hasn’t yet successfully monetized that platform – or any other. Something like 90% of revenues and profits still come from search and its related ad sales.
Investors have reason to fear Google might be a “one-trick pony,” similar to Dell. Dell was wildly successful as the “supply chain management king” during the spectacular growth of PC sales. But as PC sales growth slowed competitors matched much of Dell’s capability, and Dell stumbled trying to lower cost with such decisions as offshoring customer service. Dell’s revenue and profit growth slowed. Now Dell’s future growth prospects are unclear, and its value has waned, as the market has shifted toward products not offered by Dell.
Will Google be the “search king” that didn’t move on?
When companies are successful they tend to lock-in on what made them successful. To keep growing they have to overcome those lock-ins to do new things. The risk is that Google can’t overcome it’s lock-ins; that internal status quo police enforce them to the point of keeping new things from flourishing into new growth markets. That the company becomes stale as it avoids investing effectively in new technologies or solutions.
At Slacy.com (“What Larry Page Really Needs to Do to Return Google to its Start-up Roots“) we read from a former Google employee that there are some serious lock-ins to worry about within Google:
- The launch coordination process sets up a status quo protection team that keeps things from moving forward. When an internal expert gains this kind of power, they maintain their power by saying “no.” The more they say no, the more power they wield. Larry Page needs to be sure the launch team is saying “here’s how we can help you launch fast and easy” rather than “you can’t launch unless…”
- Hiring is managed by a group of internal recruiters. When the people who actually manage the work don’t do recruiting, and hiring, then the recruits become filtered by staffers who have biases about what makes for a good worker. Everything from resume screening to background reviews to appearances become filters for who gets interviewed by engineers and managers. In the worst case staffers develop a “Google model employee” profile they expect all hires to fit. This process systematically narrows the candidates, leading to homogeneity in hiring, a reduction in new approaches and new ways of thinking, and a less valuable, dynamic employee population.
- Increasingly engineers are forced to use a limited set of Google tools for development. External, open source, tools are increasingly considered inferior – and access to resources are limited unless engineers utilize the narrow tool set which initially made Google successful. The natural outcome is “not invented here” syndrome, where externally created products and ideas are overlooked – ignored – for all the wrong reasons. When you’re the best it’s easy to develop “NIH,” but it’s also really risky in fast moving markets like technology where someone really can have a better idea, and implement, from outside the halls of the early leader.
These risks are very real. Yet, in a company of Google’s size to some extent it is necessary to manage launches systematically, and to have staffers doing things like recruiting and screening. Additionally, when you’ve developed a set of tools that create success on an enormous scale it makes sense to use them. So the important thing for Mr. Page to do is manage these items in such a way that lock-in doesn’t keep Google from moving forward into the next new, and possibly big, market.
Google needs to be sure it is not over-managing the creation of new things. The famous “20% rule” at Google isn’t effective as applied today. Nobody can spend 80% of their job conforming to norms, and then expect to spend 20% “outside the box.” Our minds don’t work that way. Inertia takes over when we’re at 80%, and keeps us focused on doing our #1 job. And we never find the time to really get started on the other 20%. And it’s unrealistic to try dedicating an entire day a week to doing something different, because the “regular job” is demanding every single day. Likewise, nobody can dedicate a week out of the month for the same reason. As a result, even when people are encouraged to spend time on new and different things it really doesn’t happen.
Instead, Google needs a really good method for having ideas surface, and then creating dedicated teams to explore those ideas in an unbounded way. Teams that have as their only job the requirement for exploring market needs, product opportunities, and developing solutions that generate profitable new revenue. Five people totally dedicated to a new opportunity, especially if their success is important to their career ambitions, will make vastly more headway than 25 people working on a project when they can “find the time.” The bigger team may have more capabilities and more specialties, but they simply don’t have the zeal, motivation or commitment to creating a success. Failing on something that’s tertiary to your job is a lot more acceptable, especially if your primary work is going well, than failing on something to which your wholly dedicated. Plus, when you are asked to support a project part-time you do so by reinforcing past strengths, not exploring something new.
Especially worrisome is Inc magazine’s article “Facebook Poaches Inc’s Creative Director.” This is the fellow that created, and managed, the new opportunity labs at Google. What will happen to those now?
These teams also must have permission to explore the solution using any and all technology, approaches and processes. Not just the ones that made Google successful thus far. By utilizing new technologies, which may appear less robust, less scalable and even initially less powerful, Google will have people who are testing the limits of what’s new – and identifying the technologies, products and processes that not only threaten existing Google strengths but can launch Google into the next new, big thing. Supporting their needs to explore new solutions is critical to evolving Google and aiding its growth in very dynamic technologies and markets.
The major airlines all launched discount divisions to compete with Southwest. Remember Song and Ted? But these failed largely because they weren’t given permission to do whatever was necessary to win as a discount airline. Instead they had to use existing company resources and processes – including in-place reservation systems, labor union standards, existing airports and gates – and honor existing customer loyalty programs. With so many parameters pre-set, they had no hope of succeeding. They lacked permission to do what was necessary because the airlines bounded what they could do. Lock-in to what already existed killed them.
The concern is that Google today doesn’t appear to have a strong process for creating these teams that can operate in white space to develop new solutions. Google lacks a way to get the ideas on the agenda for management discussion, rapidly create a team dedicated to the tasks, resource the teams with money and other necessary tools, and then monitor performance while simultaneously encouraging behaviors that are outside the Google norms. Nobody appears to have the job of making sure good ideas stay inside Google, and are developed, rather than slipping outside for another company to exploit (can you say Facebook – for example?)
I’m a fan of Google, and a fan of the management approaches Larry Page and Google have openly discussed, and appear to have implemented. Yet, success has a way of breeding the seeds of eventual failure. Largely through the process of building strong sacred cows – such as in technology and processes for all kinds of activities that end up limiting the organization’s ability to recognize market shifts and implement changes. Success has a way of creating staff functions that see themselves as status quo cops, dedicated to re-implementing the past rather than scouting for future requirements. The list of technology giants that fell to market shifts are legendary – Cray, DEC, Wang, Lanier, Sybase, Netscape, Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems are just a few.
It’s good to be the market leader. But Larry Page has a tough job. He has to manage the things that made Google the great company it is now – the things that middle management often locks in place and won’t alter – so they don’t limit Google’s future. And he needs to make sure Google is constantly, consistently and rapidly implementing and managing teams to explore white space in order to find the next growth opportunities that keep Google vibrant for customers, employees, suppliers and investors.
View a short video on Lock-in and why businesses must evolve http://on.fb.me/i2dekj
