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Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

fivethirtyeight.com

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Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#131

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mindcrime wrote: post #123
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technology enables consolidation. I don't think that's quite right. Technology enables scale . That doesn't inherently mean consolidation. For example, you can imagine Uber as a decentralized or federated P2P free software app. It's essentially a market for rides. There is no inherent reason it has to work like Facebook rather than TCP/IP or DNS. Someone like FSF or Mozilla could build the technology and then the t…

Technology enables scale. Technology may also reduce the need for scale. If you believe that Coase[1] was right about the "nature of the firm" vis-a-vis transaction costs[2] then it would follow that technology that can reduce transaction costs reduces the advantage of being big. And since there are innate downsides to size (people usually ignore this point), transaction-cost-reducing technology should generally work…

Part of the issue is that sometimes reducing transaction costs gets them so low that the activity ends up being done by the individual rather than a business entity.

The other side of that coin is the "commoditize your complements" thing. If you make X cheap and people who have X want or need Y, whoever is selling Y is going to grow like a weed.

So that's kind of what we're seeing. Things either get so easy that you don't need to find somebody else to do them, or they don't while everything else does, in which case that thing becomes a bottleneck in the low transaction cost economy and the entity providing it turns into a giant business corporation.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#132

Post by d23 »

mindcrime wrote: post #124
rayiner wrote: post #3

I think there is a bit of cognitive dissonance in the tech community about "disruption" versus "big companies." Technology, in general, makes it easier to scale companies to large sizes, and "disruption" often involves using technology to enter an existing industry that is dominated by small, inefficient companies. A great example is Uber. Uber is making the taxi market a lot more efficient, but it's also well on the…

A new mom & pop coffee shop might easily out-compete the old mom & pop coffee shop across the street, but they can't offer the scale and uniformity of a Starbucks And if they try, they had a bad strategy in the first place, and they deserve to fail. You don't compete against Starbucks on the basis of scale and uniformity. If you do it at all, you do it by offering a higher quality product (not an unreasonable proposi…

You used coffee shops, which is a bit of a strawman. How might a small competitor even begin to compete with the iPhone?

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#133

Post by gaius »

"Disruption" really means using technology to find loopholes in the law e.g. AirBnB "disrupting" hotels by providing services for people operating unlicensed hotels. Do how do you disrupt a bank? Insider trading? Fraud? Stealing deposits?

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#134

Post by gaius »

autokad wrote: post #78
spodek wrote: post #28

As a Professor of entrepreneurship at NYU's engineering school (that VC Fred Wilson called a jewel -- http://avc.com/2014/03/the-value-of-an-engineering-degree ), I can summarize the problem in one phrase many of my students said when describing their goals after graduation: "... but I have to get a job at a big company to sponsor my visa." They're brilliant, motivated, and capable, but almost none are citizens. To s…

I know i'm going to be slaughtered in downvotes, but have the top schools ever considered admitting more citizens?

They couldn't even if they wanted to, because where are these citizen applicants? If you are are smart enough to be an engineer you are smart enough to realize that it's an industry in terminal decline and that no-one is on your side - the government, the employers, the colleges, the professional organizations are all trying to flood the market and drive down wages.

Then you look at the other professions, medicine and law, and you see secure jobs and professional associations that fight for their members like crazed wolves. It's a no-brainer.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#135

Post by blutoot »

autokad wrote: post #105
blutoot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have a visa, you can't stay in this country beyond a certain point. That has nothing to do with having killer chops for entrepreneurship.

i'll bet you if you gave an hour to think about it, even you who made that comment can think of at least 3 ways that statement is wrong. entrepreneurs find ways.

what? no you can't "entrepreneur" your way out of govt policies. and no, marrying for the sake of greencard is not an option either as sooner or later govt will catch you on that as well.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#136

Post by mindcrime »

d23 wrote: post #132
mindcrime wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new mom & pop coffee shop might easily out-compete the old mom & pop coffee shop across the street, but they can't offer the scale and uniformity of a Starbucks And if they try, they had a bad strategy in the first place, and they deserve to fail. You don't compete against Starbucks on the basis of scale and uniformity. If you do it at all, you do it by offering a higher quality product (not an unreasonable proposi…

You used coffee shops, which is a bit of a strawman. How might a small competitor even begin to compete with the iPhone?

I wasn't the one who started talking about coffee shops, FWIW.

As for the iPhone... I don't know - I haven't thought about it, and consumer devices are of little interest to me, so I'm probably not the guy to come up with a great idea for competing with the iPhone.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#137

Post by brothe2000 »

aestetix wrote: post #112
brothe2000 wrote: post #15

I think the author of the article went looking for stats to support a title. Corporate America has been disrupted however I think this article was looking for financial failure versus adapting to the market pressures. The corporations below have faced massive disruption: Kodak, HP, GM, Ford, JC Penney, Sears, McDonalds, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Best Buy, Borders, Barnes&Noble, IBM, Microsoft, Xerox, and Target have…

Ok. Kodak wasn't really disrupted so much as its market base moved to digital cameras. I suppose you can claim that retail has been disrupted by online markets like Amazon, but (to take an example) there were a lot of reports that Borders went under because of crap management. Radio Shack is still around, and with open doors to anyone who needs a cell phone ;) IBM and Microsoft haven't really been disrupted... It see…

True... I guess the point is that the claim that startups haven't disrupted corporations is true in bulk but when you pick each company it is easy to see an impact a startup has had in changing how they operate.

Flickr definitely contributed to Kodak failing as much as the market for digital cameras. Kodak actually had digital technology but failed to capitalize on it.

Borders may have bad management but so do startups that fail which maybe says startups need better management too? Seems like a common denominator versus differentiator?

Radio Shack closed a ton of stores and is still losing money. IBM stopped selling computers because Dell and others did it better and cheaper (Dell was a startup at one time...) and Microsoft keeps fighting for relevancy in software on all fronts.

But yeah, some of my comments weren't exactly on point. I just think that to say companies aren't disrupted is a broad paint stroke that the article didn't fully support.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#138

Post by brothe2000 »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #34
brothe2000 wrote: post #15

I think the author of the article went looking for stats to support a title. Corporate America has been disrupted however I think this article was looking for financial failure versus adapting to the market pressures. The corporations below have faced massive disruption: Kodak, HP, GM, Ford, JC Penney, Sears, McDonalds, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Best Buy, Borders, Barnes&Noble, IBM, Microsoft, Xerox, and Target have…

>I have never heard somebody say "I'd totally build X but the tax incentives just aren't high enough". I read it more as "I'd totally build X but I have no idea how to do it legally or even how to learn what the legal requirements are." Much easier to work for a big company that can afford full-time lawyers.

I think some times startups say "I know this is the law but it's outdated and let's see what happens..."

Sometimes it's bad: Aereo Sometimes it's controversial: Uber / Lyft

But for the most part I think people act and then find out after the fact they did something wrong or not in alignment with expectations.

For example, is Soylent worried about somebody dying? Probably but that didn't stop them from doing what they are doing.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#139

Post by JoeAltmaier »

brothe2000 wrote: post #137
aestetix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Kodak wasn't really disrupted so much as its market base moved to digital cameras. I suppose you can claim that retail has been disrupted by online markets like Amazon, but (to take an example) there were a lot of reports that Borders went under because of crap management. Radio Shack is still around, and with open doors to anyone who needs a cell phone ;) IBM and Microsoft haven't really been disrupted... It see…

True... I guess the point is that the claim that startups haven't disrupted corporations is true in bulk but when you pick each company it is easy to see an impact a startup has had in changing how they operate. Flickr definitely contributed to Kodak failing as much as the market for digital cameras. Kodak actually had digital technology but failed to capitalize on it. Borders may have bad management but so do startu…

Microsoft fighting? Their revenue continues to climb. Its maybe cool to dis them, but they continue to make big bucks and grow.

Re: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted

#140

Post by brothe2000 »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #74
brothe2000 wrote: post #15

I think the author of the article went looking for stats to support a title. Corporate America has been disrupted however I think this article was looking for financial failure versus adapting to the market pressures. The corporations below have faced massive disruption: Kodak, HP, GM, Ford, JC Penney, Sears, McDonalds, Radio Shack, Circuit City, Best Buy, Borders, Barnes&Noble, IBM, Microsoft, Xerox, and Target have…

Who disrupted McDonalds?

McDonalds had to compete with coffee shops, places with Wifi, installed RedBox to get people to walk into the place, and the general move toward healthier foods and locally grown food. That's part of the reason they bought into Chipotle.
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