(I was there first hand to witness it again and again!)
Bill Gates is terrifyingly smart. He sees trends decades ahead. But knowing something is coming (smart TVs) does you no good without timing.
You build a first gen product, accrue mountains of legacy tech debt in the process (being first is hard! There is no one else to learn lessons from!) and then a competitor comes along and makes a V2 when the market is more ready and they can implement it better than you because they can learn from everything you did wrong (possibly also hiring half your team away).
Timing is equally important as product. Making a smart TV before widespread broadband adoption? Before streaming video had a flood of high quality content? Oops.
Real Player was doing streaming video in the 90s! Everyone knew it was the future, it was obviously the future! The future is now and the majority of video is streaming from a server somewhere!
Great idea, but ouch that timing. (That said, founders got rich anyway, and real video was a necessary step to where we are now!)
> So what’s the lesson for future business leaders? Someone has to be first.
Let it be someone else. Maybe spinoff promising new ideas where you can't follow others. If you can find ideas to be second on, look at old product annpuncements from companies that tend to be too early and shut down products that don't have engagement. Microsoft and Yahoo are good ones.
Or, do the new idea, patent the hell out of it, let it die, and when the idea comes around again, get some licensing revenue.
The problem with Microsoft being a first mover is they're too big. A small line of business is a problem for most big companies. It acrues too little customer oriented development to grow, because the numbers don't justify investment; but it acrues all the corporate cruft development and the product becomes hard to pivot under the weight of three rebrands.
But this can't work. Then why would anyone innovate? I reject the assertion that it's impossible to innovate and develop a viable product. My question is what makes a company able to do both?
Jobs waited for the right time for mobile and tablets. Apple also waited for smart watches as well. Same goes for Car Play. They seemed to have ran out of patience waiting for AR/VR.0
There was a company called Kosmo (Kosmo?) during the first .com bubble. Basically door dash / Uber eats but way too early.
Sure but “be second” doesn’t help that first mover. What incentive is there to innovate if your product is doomed to fail? What can a company do to both innovate and develop a viable product?
Are the corporate structures and cultures necessary for this just that different?
(I was there first hand to witness it again and again!)
Bill Gates is terrifyingly smart. He sees trends decades ahead. But knowing something is coming (smart TVs) does you no good without timing.
You build a first gen product, accrue mountains of legacy tech debt in the process (being first is hard! There is no one else to learn lessons from!) and then a competitor comes along and makes a V2 when the market is more ready and they can implement it better than you because they can learn from everything you did wrong (possibly also hiring half your team away).
Timing is equally important as product. Making a smart TV before widespread broadband adoption? Before streaming video had a flood of high quality content? Oops.
Real Player was doing streaming video in the 90s! Everyone knew it was the future, it was obviously the future! The future is now and the majority of video is streaming from a server somewhere!
Great idea, but ouch that timing. (That said, founders got rich anyway, and real video was a necessary step to where we are now!)