5 ms·

This is tangential, but... We had a futurist from Intel visit our small startup about two years ago for a future planning/predicting exercise. I think we were

by akjetma 11y ago

This is tangential, but... We had a futurist from Intel visit our small startup about two years ago for a future planning/predicting exercise. I think we were not the correct audience for these exercises though, due to the small size of our company. What I learned from the exercise was that companies as large and influential as Intel don't have to follow market trends or predict "how things will be" because they are not subjects of some natural market--they _define_ the market. It seemed crazy to me to have exercises planning 20+ years into the future, but Intel necessarily has to do this due to the size of the ship they're piloting.

caseysoftware 11y ago
That's a really good point. I think of earlier incarnations of Microsoft the same way. Bill Gates' stated Vision decades ago was "a computer on every desktop" and he helped (led?) us there to the point where we now take it for granted. The sheer audaciousness of the original Vision is amazing considering the cost, size, etc of what computers were then. Whatever the (often valid) criticism is today, they helped define and expand our industry in a way that shouldn't be overlooked. Not many companies hope to do that, let alone accomplish it.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  But on the other hand Bill Gates and Microsoft were blindsided by the Internet.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    I don't know if blindsighted is the word. Sure, they certainly weren't on the forefront, and at the time to us in the industry it seemed like they were waaaaay late to the game, but at least for me in retrospect they weren't really that late, and I don't think it made a lick of difference did it? Missing the boat on the importance of Google and the iPhone, now those were huuuuge mistakes. Was Gates still running the show then?
    - ams6110 11y ago
      If Microsoft had been earlier, Google might (probably) have never existed.
  - jandrese 11y ago
    Bill Gates wrote a book in 1995 entitled "The Road Ahead" that barely mentioned the Internet and especially the World Wide Web. Microsoft was definitely behind the ball on the Internet revolution.
    - marincounty 11y ago
      I'll get hammered for this, but as a young man, I remember Al Gore talking about the Internet. Yes, there were people before him, but he had the stage, and the audience. He started people--people with money, and connections to look into this crazy university tool. He made the mistake of say he invented the Internet. It's was a bad, egotistical statement, but he got us talking about it. Actually, I don't even think we would be talking about global warming if it wasen't for Al Gore. I didn't like the man when I was younger for horrid reasons; like I thought he was a spoiled, rich politician who really didn't care, and was using these topics to gain political points. I was completely wrong! I wish he would run for office again. I know I would give him a vote.
      - mikekchar 11y ago
        Perspective is a funny thing. I'm trying to work out the timing, but my buddy and I were running a UUCP network in Manitoba, Canada round about 1988. UUNet had just connected to the internet backbone and we chatted with them briefly about connecting up with them. They said as long as we paid for a T1 from Toronto, they would let us work with them. I'm pretty sure this was before AlterNet, so it would have had to have been prior to 1990. IIRC, the cost to us would have been about $30K per month and we considered the option of starting up a commercial ISP. In the end we decided not to, but at the time I was absolutely convinced we could have made it a viable business. When Al Gore hit my radar, I thought he was completely irrelevant. In retrospect, I'm sure that's not true because some of the legislation that he pushed through paved the way for commercial traffic. But believe me, it was coming whether he did anything or not. He may have accelerated the process slightly, but probably not too much. His major contribution may actually have been to maintain US dominance of the internet for a couple more decades. Canada was already gearing up for it and I remember friends setting up fledgling ISPs in about 1993 (right when CANARIE had finished being set up). Personally, I don't have any real thoughts about Al Gore one way or another. I can see he was very influential, but from my perspective he was mostly just riding the wave as opposed to creating it.
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Totally agree.. and then again by the move to mobile devices.
stephenboyd 11y ago
Intel has maintained itself well, but they missed a huge opportunity in the rise of smartphones and tablets.
- stephenboyd 11y ago
  I just got curious about this and looked for an explanation. Intel does a lot of forecasting and their predicted data was flawed. This article explains it succinctly: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/16/intel-chips-could-have-powered-first-iphone-ceo-otelini-says http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/16/intel-chips-could-... Intel CEO Paul Otellini on the iPhone negotiations: "At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought."

by akjetma 11y ago

caseysoftware 11y ago

That's a really good point. I think of earlier incarnations of Microsoft the same way. Bill Gates' stated Vision decades ago was "a computer on every desktop" and he helped (led?) us there to the point where we now take it for granted. The sheer audaciousness of the original Vision is amazing considering the cost, size, etc of what computers were then. Whatever the (often valid) criticism is today, they helped define and expand our industry in a way that shouldn't be overlooked. Not many companies hope to do that, let alone accomplish it.

onewaystreet 11y ago
But on the other hand Bill Gates and Microsoft were blindsided by the Internet.
- mistermann 11y ago
  I don't know if blindsighted is the word. Sure, they certainly weren't on the forefront, and at the time to us in the industry it seemed like they were waaaaay late to the game, but at least for me in retrospect they weren't really that late, and I don't think it made a lick of difference did it? Missing the boat on the importance of Google and the iPhone, now those were huuuuge mistakes. Was Gates still running the show then?
  - ams6110 11y ago
    If Microsoft had been earlier, Google might (probably) have never existed.
- jandrese 11y ago
  Bill Gates wrote a book in 1995 entitled "The Road Ahead" that barely mentioned the Internet and especially the World Wide Web. Microsoft was definitely behind the ball on the Internet revolution.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    I'll get hammered for this, but as a young man, I remember Al Gore talking about the Internet. Yes, there were people before him, but he had the stage, and the audience. He started people--people with money, and connections to look into this crazy university tool. He made the mistake of say he invented the Internet. It's was a bad, egotistical statement, but he got us talking about it. Actually, I don't even think we would be talking about global warming if it wasen't for Al Gore. I didn't like the man when I was younger for horrid reasons; like I thought he was a spoiled, rich politician who really didn't care, and was using these topics to gain political points. I was completely wrong! I wish he would run for office again. I know I would give him a vote.
    - mikekchar 11y ago
      Perspective is a funny thing. I'm trying to work out the timing, but my buddy and I were running a UUCP network in Manitoba, Canada round about 1988. UUNet had just connected to the internet backbone and we chatted with them briefly about connecting up with them. They said as long as we paid for a T1 from Toronto, they would let us work with them. I'm pretty sure this was before AlterNet, so it would have had to have been prior to 1990. IIRC, the cost to us would have been about $30K per month and we considered the option of starting up a commercial ISP. In the end we decided not to, but at the time I was absolutely convinced we could have made it a viable business. When Al Gore hit my radar, I thought he was completely irrelevant. In retrospect, I'm sure that's not true because some of the legislation that he pushed through paved the way for commercial traffic. But believe me, it was coming whether he did anything or not. He may have accelerated the process slightly, but probably not too much. His major contribution may actually have been to maintain US dominance of the internet for a couple more decades. Canada was already gearing up for it and I remember friends setting up fledgling ISPs in about 1993 (right when CANARIE had finished being set up). Personally, I don't have any real thoughts about Al Gore one way or another. I can see he was very influential, but from my perspective he was mostly just riding the wave as opposed to creating it.
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Totally agree.. and then again by the move to mobile devices.

stephenboyd 11y ago

Intel has maintained itself well, but they missed a huge opportunity in the rise of smartphones and tablets.

stephenboyd 11y ago
I just got curious about this and looked for an explanation. Intel does a lot of forecasting and their predicted data was flawed. This article explains it succinctly: http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/16/intel-chips-could-have-powered-first-iphone-ceo-otelini-says http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/16/intel-chips-could-... Intel CEO Paul Otellini on the iPhone negotiations: "At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought."