1. [ GUEST COLUMN ]
BY ANDY BLUMENTHAL
You’re at the Top
—Now What?
“We are living in a material world, and Everyone is asking: Why can’t people, are mortal. Some challenges are
I am a material girl.” — Madonna these companies find their next great part of life’s natural ups and downs.
F
act? Microsoft launched the Kin and Others tell us we are in a decline that
or some people, like Madonna, dropped it after less than two months; cannot be reversed. At that point, the
the “material world” represents Bing has a fraction of Google’s mar- organization must make decisions that
a society where people must pay ket share in search; and Windows are consonant with the reality of its
to get their way. To me it means the Mobile never became a major player situation, salvage what it can and return
mortal world, where we are born, live, as an operating system. Further, as to the shareholders what it can’t.
try to thrive and ultimately pass the The Wall Street Journal pointed out, In other words, eventually every
baton to others. the Xbox video game system, though organism will cease to exist in its cur-
Mortality isn’t limited to human finally profitable, Microsoft will likely rent form. During its life cycle, it can
beings, but is also a property of organi- never recoup the initial investment in reinvent itself like IBM did in the 1990s.
zations. Several articles have appeared research and development. And when reinvention is no longer an
about it lately in mainstream and IT Similarly Google gambled by acquir- option, it goes the way of Polaroid.
publications. Industry analysts are ing the ad network DoubleClick in This is similar to technology itself.
looking to Microsoft and Google and 2007 for $3.1 billion, YouTube in 2006 As a new technology emerges, time and
wondering how they, like other tech- for $1.6 billion and the mobile ad plat- effort is spent further developing it to
nology organizations, will master the form AdMob in 2009 for $750 million. full capacity. We optimize and inte-
competency of, as Computerworld puts But so far, as Fortune noted, Google grate it into our lives and fix it when
it, “Getting to next.” hasn’t seen significant benefit from it’s broken. But there comes a time
A curious irony runs throughout these these purchases in terms of diversify- when horses and buggies are no longer
conversations. Microsoft and Google ing its revenue stream. “The day is needed, and it’s time to face the facts
are seemingly on top of their respec- coming when … the activity known as and move on to cars — and one day, who
tive games, dominating the market and ‘Googling’ no longer will be at the cen- knows, space scooters?
earning tens of billions in revenue per ter of our online lives. Then what?” said Going back full circle to the human
year. Despite being at the pinnacle of The Wall Street Journal. analogy: People can reinvent them-
the technology industry, various indus- From the perspective of organiza- selves by going back to school, changing
try watchers have noticed, they appear tional behavior, there’s a natural law careers, perhaps remarrying and so on.
unable to see what’s the next rung on at work here that explains why these But eventually we all go gray. And that’s
their ladder. It’s almost like they’re resource-rich companies, which have fine; that’s the way it should be. Let’s
dumbfounded that nobody has placed the brains and brawn to repeatedly reinvent ourselves while we can. And
it in front of them. reinvent themselves, are in apparent when we can’t, let’s accept our mortal-
Consider, for example, that Microsoft decline. All organizations, like all peo- ity graciously and be joyful for the great
dominates desktop operating systems, ple and natural organisms, have a natu- things that we have done. ¨
with approximately a 90 percent share ral life cycle — birth, growth, maturity,
of the market, business productivity decline and death.
Andy Blumenthal is the CTO of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
suites at 80 percent and browser soft- To stay competitive and on top of Firearms and Explosives. A regular speaker and published
ware at 60 percent. Google similarly our game, we constantly must plan our author, Blumenthal blogs at http://totalcio.blogspot.com.
Blumenthal’s views are his own and do not represent those of
dominates Internet search at about strategy and tactics to move into the any agency. This column does not represent an assessment of
64 percent. future. However, organizations, like Microsoft, Google or any other organization.
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