3 ms·
By market cap. I'm a bit curious of your founding dates. Alphabet was formed from a restructuring of Google. Google was founded in 1998, not 1988.
by skookumchuck 9y ago
By market cap. I'm a bit curious of your founding dates. Alphabet was formed from a restructuring of Google. Google was founded in 1998, not 1988.
- grzm 9y agoI looked them up on Wikipedia. Good catch! Typo. And if I were consistent, I would have made a note on the restructuring as I did in a couple of other cases. The commenter apologizes for the error. ;)
- skookumchuck 9y agoI also checked Berkshire Hathaway (1889). It actually goes back to 1839. But does a series of mergers and acquisitions actually count here? The modern form came from Warren Buffett buying shares in it in 1962, and eventually buying them out years later. Buffett's version of the company has pretty much no resemblance to the company he bought out, they aren't at all in the same business, and he mentioned in 2010 that BH was more of a hindrance than a help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Hathaway#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Hathaway#History Notably absent from the list are behemoths of the past, like RCA, Kodak, Sears, IBM, Ford, GM, US Steel, Union Pacific, etc.
- grzm 9y agoMy point (which I'll repeat once and then I'm done) is not that established companies never get disrupted or innovate forever, but to push back against the idea that established companies can't innovate (and that The Innovator's Dilemma contends that disruption is the only way innovation happens), which I took from "Innovation doesn't come from established corporations." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16665304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16665304) I don't see anything you've added that contradicts that.