[HN Gopher] Betting on things that never change (2017)
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Betting on things that never change (2017)
Author : mooreds
Score : 26 points
Date : 2021-11-20 16:37 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.collaborativefund.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.collaborativefund.com)
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Seems like a nice sounding narrative that doesn't really hold
| water, at least from a practical perspective.
|
| Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, AWS, Google Search and a lot of others
| - they were in fields changing all the time. Unless you define
| these _very_ abstractly as "communication", "socializing",
| "entertainment", "compute infrastructure" and "finding things"
| and say "these things don't change in that they continue to
| happen" - in which case you can take virtually _any_ product to
| the most abstract definition and say "it's not changing".
| gweinberg wrote:
| Yeah, Sears had a catalog business for like a century. Whatever
| went wrong a Sears, it wasn't that they had a corporate culture
| that taught them people only want to buy things at your
| physical store.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Well, you've done a nice job of restating the article,
| actually. It claims that all seemingly revolutionary businesses
| were not successful because of the things that _change_ (like
| technology solutions e.g., "finding things", "communication",
| "compute infrastructure" etc) but on the same unchanging
| principles (e.g., business opportunities and strategies).
|
| TFA / TL;DR: In the last 100 years we've gone
| from horses to jets and mailing letters to Skype. But every
| sustainable business is accompanied by one of a handful of
| timeless strategies: Lower prices.
| Faster solutions to problems. Greater control over
| your time. More choices. Added
| comfort. Entertainment/curiosity.
| Deeper human interactions. Greater transparency.
| Less collateral damage. Higher social status.
| Increased confidence/trust.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Then I've done a bad job communicating what I meant. My point
| is, (virtually) every single product can make the claim they
| are making a bet on something that doesn't change. Both good
| and bad products. Failed and successful.
|
| The entire article says nothing of practical value. Everyone
| is betting on something that doesn't change and something
| which does.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >Take three companies in the 1990s: Sears, Beenz, and Amazon.
|
| >Sears bet the Internet changed nothing, to its detriment. Beenz
| bet the Internet changed everything - creating a points-based
| currency valid only at online merchants - to its detriment.
| Amazon bet the Internet changed distribution, but rooted its
| strategy in things that have never, and will never, change. It
| nailed the center of the Venn diagram of change on one side and
| timeless on the other. One drove competition, the other drove
| compounding. Every successful company does this.
|
| So based on this metric, what would be the next sears. It's easy
| in hindsight to say what worked.
| coderintherye wrote:
| It's hard to make a perfect analogy, some potentials:
|
| * Computer companies that bet Cloud changed nothing (HP, IBM) *
| Oil companies that bet solar/wind changed nothing (Chevron,
| Exxon) * Car companies that bet electric changed nothing
| (Fiat?)
| kqr wrote:
| Or as Deming put it: long-term successful organisations need to
| find their _constancy of purpose_.
|
| Kodak didn't find it: they were in the business of analogue film;
| they could have been in the business of capturing memories, and
| survived the digitalisation of photography.
|
| Manufacturers of carburetors generally didn't find it; they were
| in the business of carburetors, and not stochiometric mixtures of
| air and fuel, and they didn't survive fuel injection.
|
| The list could go on and on. Focus on "the job to be done", not
| the way you're currently doing the job. That lets you find
| constancy of purpose.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The first name in carbs for me has always been Holley. (I've
| got two cars with Holley 750 Double Pumpers.)
|
| They not only not survived the EFI change, but even went public
| (via merger) this summer.
| FredPret wrote:
| This is the premise of the book Start With Why
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| This is.. a weird spin. Kodak is a great long-term success
| story. Businesses aren't forever.
|
| If Kodak was in the "business of capturing memories", what
| would they have done differently?
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I knew someone who was working for a post-Kodak spinoff
| (Alaris). They tried just that-- to reframe themselves as a
| company that managed memories. It was an interesting concept,
| but I think they came in far too late in a crowded space.
|
| https://www.kodakmoments.com/
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