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In practice, “internal competition” isn’t competing in the way the free market does. The most politically connected product tends to win, not the one that has t
by sshumaker 6y ago
In practice, “internal competition” isn’t competing in the way the free market does. The most politically connected product tends to win, not the one that has the best odds of success.
And if you let these all go to market, you risk eroding user trust (think Google and messaging products). Confusing your users is not a good thing.
- koheripbal 6y agoThis is a half truth. Politics counts - but so does getting functionality out the door and gaining adoption. People aren't stupid. If one team is simply failing to deliver, then the internal competition is a hedge on that.
- 86J8oyZv 6y agoDo you mean "most politically connected" or "best marketed at the right time?" Outside of products being used by state agencies, I don't think political connections have much bearing...
- Ozzie_osman 6y agoI think he means politically connected internally. Ie the VP or Director of your group convinces the higher-ups that theyve won the internal competition even if they don't have the better product. This definitely happens.
- Ozzie_osman 6y agoVery true about the politically-connected team winning. That said, the high level point is even without the M&A lever, these companies can still succeed by doing things that seem wasteful. FB is a good example with Snap. They didn't have the M&A lever (for different reasons in that case), but they just built Stories into Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. If you were willing to spend billions on M&A you can just spend them internally. And you don't even need to build a free-market best product, because you have a brand and user base that startups don't. In any case, I do hope that alone isn't enough to keep big companies entrenched. Also hi Scott!