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by arkitaip
5196 days ago
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This is the most important topic in this discussion and maybe the most topic for any startup or company in general. How do prevent your business from becoming obsolete? Is that even possible in the long run for IT firms? How about staying hungry or at least not becoming arrogant like RIM? |
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You get hugely successful, defining a new product. You build a very effective business to capitalize on your product. The state you were operating in when you designed/built your product is by necessity baked into your business. Life, for a time, becomes Very Good.
But the world state changes. This is inevitable. You don't care — there's enough money in what you do so that changing your business just isn't rational. So you keep on keeping on, and your culture continues to grow in the direction allowed — fighting to keep the status quo, even as the rest of the world is moving on.
And then at some point, once the world state you built into your company (that has been profitable for you since day one) and the current world state diverge to the point that you can't even understand the change required, and you are going to be staring down obsolescence. There's nothing you can do. Your entire company is predicated on fitting a context that no longer exists. You can't understand what's happened, because to understand what has happened your company would have to be a very different company.
And you die.