Google. Facebook. Apple. In media today, this is the group to watch. In their respective fields and beyond, amid the rapid change and fragmentation, with new entrants and incumbents on all sides, this is the trio that seems best poised – regardless of what the future holds – for long-term sector dominance. To claim that the search functionality, the iPhone, the social networking frenzy that feeds on itself, are the cause of this trio’s huge and growing status, would be to imply that these companies have landed into their respective places almost by accident, and this is simply not true. Their success is the result of something much more fundamental, and which is no accident at all.
In each case, the organization has been able to transcend its original competitive circle and not only expand out of an original product or product line, but redefine a sector and, in many cases, redefine its competitors on its own terms. Google stopped being just a search engine years ago. Apple could have stopped with the Mac product and chosen to carve out a comfortable niche in the education market. Facebook could have been another Friendster, and had every opportunity to be just that. (As Twitter now illustrates by example, it isn’t easy to hold on to your audience and maintain a growth trajectory in social media.) But what these companies have done instead, and the way they have gone about it, is a real lesson in enterprise.
“Unless you are breaking stuff you are not moving fast enough.” Thus, Mark Zuckerberg in a recent interview. The number of new services and features rolled out by Facebook in the past couple of years is mind-numbing. Contrast this to Twitter’s pace of development, which more or less amounts to a new mode of “retweeting” and a “listing” system, and the diverging audience trend-lines of Facebook and Twitter become easier to understand.
Over to Google. In the last week or two alone, it has introduced a new programming language, a new location based service, a new handset to compete against the best of them in wireless telecom, and word is out about a new Google operating system and web browser release in the weeks ahead. Contrast this to Microsoft, which after years of deliberation and development, fits, rumors, and starts, has come up with a new Windows release, which is more or less the same Windows thing except a little better, and arguably about as good as Apple’s platform, plus or minus a virus threat or two.
Apple, in the meantime, is working on a new Tablet, which threatens both the Kindle and perhaps the traditional laptop, and rapid improvements to its web-TV setup that could redefine pay television in due course. Now that the company has changed the way we listen to music and the standard by which we measure the quality of telephone equipment, taking on new consumer utilities seems a natural extension.
What these three companies have in common – as different as they may be in all other ways – is an ingrained spirit for innovation velocity, and a virtually endless energy supply. While other giants have either been slowed down by their bulk, or have otherwise paused in their upward trajectory to rub their eyes or high-five in disbelief at their own good fortune, these three particular giants have never lost the spirit of entrepreneurship.
Perhaps unlike any of their competitors, Google, Facebook, and Apple seem to have understood that in this very dynamic and volatile sector, even the most mature and profitable incumbent is a startup every day.
