5 ms·

Are there any examples of an org creating an internal competitor to disrupt external competitors and potentially replace itself?

jhawk28 5y ago
Apple's products regularly cannibalize themselves.
oblio 5y ago
iPhone killed the iPad. Netflix streaming killed Netflix DVDs-by-mail. Azure-cross-platform-support-is-king is sort-of killing Windows-only-tools. It's still super hard to do, but every CEO post-2000 has read the innovator's dilemma and you can see that in their actions.
- filereaper 5y ago
  >iPhone killed the iPad. I think you meant iPod here.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Both would apply. The iPod in the late 2000s and somewhat later the iPhone got bigger screens and killed the iPad craze.
ksec 5y ago
Intel transition from NAND to Chip.
htrp 5y ago
Many have tried .... no one has succeeded because internal venture innovation is hard.
- oblio 5y ago
  Any day now Google Allo, Hangouts, Talk, Chat, Plus, Wave, Messages, Voice, Duo, Meet will displace Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp! Just you wait!!!
- ksec 5y ago
  >internal venture innovation is hard. Only CEOs. Which are mostly stuck with politics. Founders tends to have it easier. But that is assuming they see it coming.
machinerychorus 5y ago
Maybe google does something like this, with their myriad services? but then everyone complains about them constantly killing off products
- sitkack 5y ago
  No they just fracture and kill markets.
  - 8ytecoder 5y ago
    They don't have a cohesive long term strategy. They do have the capability to disrupt with internal innovation.
badinfo 5y ago
Google had a relatively good chat product, Google Talk. Then they invented Google Hangouts, Google+, Wave, Allo, Messenger, Meet, and Chat. Now IRC is dead. Who gets the last laugh, huh?!
- PeterCorless 5y ago
  You could also argue that Google tried to reinvent Skype, Slack, Discord, and a million other chat apps, and they cannibalized their own offerings because they were feckless and mercurial.
  - badinfo 5y ago
    Yeah, and also cuz they kinda sucked. 1st-gen iMessage, or even old-school Trillian, was loads better than Google's graveyard of shitty chat products. Google had no overarching chat strategy, just threw gobs of money and different teams at reinventing different spokes of the wheels, never thinking about the cart as a whole.
    - dang 5y ago
      Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=community%20identity%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... Also: please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. We're trying for a different sort of site here.
- delecti 5y ago
  Google Talk evolved into Hangouts which then evolved into Chat. It's all one continuous line with a terrible marketing strategy. From what I can tell, Meet seems to be just a confusing way to access Hangouts video chats.
dehrmann 5y ago
Netflix streaming killed Netflix by mail.
- dnautics 5y ago
  not totally killed; you can still do it!
- jopsen 5y ago
  Was streaming cheaper? Or rather didn't streaming have higher margins?
  - adventured 5y ago
    No. The Netflix mail business was very significantly profitable and the streaming business was losing a ton of money for years. The mail business carried, paid for, the streaming business. That's because of the the entirely different business model of the disc rental business (first sale doctrine) vs streaming licensing business (you're screwed, the content owners will squeeze you to the wall). The horrible licensing costs of the streaming business is what prompted Netflix to push into production (basically direct those fees equivalent into assets they'd own outright instead of paying all their revenue back out to licensing fees forever). The horrible streaming licensing cost problem is why Spotify struggles to earn a decent profit despite how much they've grown and having a zillion subscribers. You get no benefit of scale on your margin, because the content owners always squeeze you as you grow. Spotify is up to $8.6b in revenue and still losing money. Their business has no margin at all, and that's essentially all due to the music licensing costs. That's why they're desperate to push into anything else, other lines of business, where they can not have to pay all their revenue out in licensing fees.
    - jopsen 5y ago
      Makes sense..

jhawk28 5y ago

Apple's products regularly cannibalize themselves.

oblio 5y ago

iPhone killed the iPad. Netflix streaming killed Netflix DVDs-by-mail. Azure-cross-platform-support-is-king is sort-of killing Windows-only-tools. It's still super hard to do, but every CEO post-2000 has read the innovator's dilemma and you can see that in their actions.

filereaper 5y ago
>iPhone killed the iPad. I think you meant iPod here.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Both would apply. The iPod in the late 2000s and somewhat later the iPhone got bigger screens and killed the iPad craze.

ksec 5y ago

Intel transition from NAND to Chip.

htrp 5y ago

Many have tried .... no one has succeeded because internal venture innovation is hard.

oblio 5y ago
Any day now Google Allo, Hangouts, Talk, Chat, Plus, Wave, Messages, Voice, Duo, Meet will displace Facebook Messenger/WhatsApp! Just you wait!!!
ksec 5y ago
>internal venture innovation is hard. Only CEOs. Which are mostly stuck with politics. Founders tends to have it easier. But that is assuming they see it coming.

machinerychorus 5y ago

Maybe google does something like this, with their myriad services? but then everyone complains about them constantly killing off products

sitkack 5y ago
No they just fracture and kill markets.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  They don't have a cohesive long term strategy. They do have the capability to disrupt with internal innovation.

badinfo 5y ago

Google had a relatively good chat product, Google Talk. Then they invented Google Hangouts, Google+, Wave, Allo, Messenger, Meet, and Chat. Now IRC is dead. Who gets the last laugh, huh?!

PeterCorless 5y ago
You could also argue that Google tried to reinvent Skype, Slack, Discord, and a million other chat apps, and they cannibalized their own offerings because they were feckless and mercurial.
- badinfo 5y ago
  Yeah, and also cuz they kinda sucked. 1st-gen iMessage, or even old-school Trillian, was loads better than Google's graveyard of shitty chat products. Google had no overarching chat strategy, just threw gobs of money and different teams at reinventing different spokes of the wheels, never thinking about the cart as a whole.
  - dang 5y ago
    Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=community%20identity%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... Also: please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. We're trying for a different sort of site here.
delecti 5y ago
Google Talk evolved into Hangouts which then evolved into Chat. It's all one continuous line with a terrible marketing strategy. From what I can tell, Meet seems to be just a confusing way to access Hangouts video chats.

dehrmann 5y ago

Netflix streaming killed Netflix by mail.

dnautics 5y ago
not totally killed; you can still do it!
jopsen 5y ago
Was streaming cheaper? Or rather didn't streaming have higher margins?
- adventured 5y ago
  No. The Netflix mail business was very significantly profitable and the streaming business was losing a ton of money for years. The mail business carried, paid for, the streaming business. That's because of the the entirely different business model of the disc rental business (first sale doctrine) vs streaming licensing business (you're screwed, the content owners will squeeze you to the wall). The horrible licensing costs of the streaming business is what prompted Netflix to push into production (basically direct those fees equivalent into assets they'd own outright instead of paying all their revenue back out to licensing fees forever). The horrible streaming licensing cost problem is why Spotify struggles to earn a decent profit despite how much they've grown and having a zillion subscribers. You get no benefit of scale on your margin, because the content owners always squeeze you as you grow. Spotify is up to $8.6b in revenue and still losing money. Their business has no margin at all, and that's essentially all due to the music licensing costs. That's why they're desperate to push into anything else, other lines of business, where they can not have to pay all their revenue out in licensing fees.
  - jopsen 5y ago
    Makes sense..