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To a certain extent, one could imagine a tech conglomerate would be easier to manage than a traditional brick and mortar conglomerate, and least for the digital
by msabalau 11y ago
To a certain extent, one could imagine a tech conglomerate would be easier to manage than a traditional brick and mortar conglomerate, and least for the digital offerings. It's a lot easier to wind down less successful initiatives, and redeploy creative, skilled people to work that is more valuable. No sunk costs in production lines, inventory or call centers.
- nostrademons 11y agoThe problem - at least in my mental model, and it's possible I'm wrong, it's often dangerous to bet against Larry - is that new technology businesses often require a closeness to individual early adopters and speed of decision making that is impossible to achieve in a big company. The factors that make new tech businesses successful are often very subtle, and they're discovered only through long periods of direct interaction with users. When you're an engineer at Google, you don't have the freedom of direct-messaging an individual user, saying "Hey, what do you think? Got any suggestions for us?" and then immediately making the change and pushing it to production. In my experience, that seems to be essential for new tech products to catch on. (With the possible exception of Apple, who seem to be able to convince the consumer that they really want an Apple product regardless of what that product does. Even that lustre seems to be fading.)