Why Did They Fail ?

Remember Orkut, Yahoo Messenger or My Space, if not I bet you do remember Nokia?

Well it was Year 1999 and I was still in my University, getting my hands dirty on some fairly catchy communication modes and tools. Globalization was popping at that time and so was .com boom taking a big leap. Developing economies like Brazil, China and India were at center stage to adopt the America’s led Digital offering.

20 years fast forward and the landscape has radically changed. Orkut, Yahoo messenger are at best “Icons at the Kids rapid fire quiz” round for the 21st century Generation. I was pondering what went wrong or what keeps some of them sailing

• Consistent Innovation – Lot of the shops do get closed as they don’t offer new products/features to the customer. Customer wants innovation as it challenges their instinct. We want to be surprised. Many of the products do fail when the organizations fail to innovate. Orkut was launched in 2004 had more market penetration vs Facebook today keeping the same Internet users based. In 2008 they were at their peak and 2014 it was dissolved. If you are still googling Orkut – it was among the successful Google Social App. By far the largest in countries like India and Brazil. No traces till mid 2018, lately there seems to be some chirping …more to read at https://www.orkut.com/index.html. Is it too late to do this or is it opportunity to cover up on misses like Facebook data breach ?
•  Ui – The product needs to also look good and not just be built good – Yahoo Messenger –digital revolution of 20th century – connected people across the globe, yet it disappeared in July 2018. https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN28776.html . While innovation could be one of the reasons, but it was not WhatsApp. In last stage of its existence, it was a drag, users were not sure what they are getting of it and what value add it brings and “what more” they could do with the messenger. Have you heard WhatsApp enabling peer to peer payment via app and yet keeping the look and feel simple, easy to use and clean. Let’s take another example on Ui - How was your experience on Hangout? :) Some of you may say, my last hangout was at that shack at the beach. One of the key reason why Google product Hangout didn’t capture the market, is that, in spite of successful eco system around it, it missed on creating appealing Ui.
• Perfect Timing – We all have bad timing, how about making it an opportunity? Moving away a bit from the Hi-tech industry, Philip Morris biggest success came from, it taking a leap of faith and create a product which made them #1 in the sector. Yes, its IQOS. Not that I am promoting the product, but they could see the threat of reduction of direct tobacco consumption in traditional markets. Lot of external factors beyond the control forced them to innovate. Not that e-cigarettes didn’t exist but they packaged it well. Great success and well done on timing.
•  Agility & Adaptability – Coming back to the technology – we all have been pounded by examples of Nokia and Blackberry. They were great, but they got fixated. They couldn’t see the revolutionary change, and even if they did they weren’t agile enough. By the way, if it’s a surprise, Samsung was in the same category, with the first mobile launched in 1988, they saw what was happening with Apple between 2007 to 2009 and dawn of 29th June 2009, Samsung launched its first smart phone. Currently it leads the market with ~20% share of the Smart phone market. What did they do differently, they were agile and adapted shamelessly looking at the success of the predecessor. Ref - https://www.statista.com/statistics/271496/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-vendors-since-4th-quarter-2009/
•  Focus on Core – Hand shake for rest - I would say this is last on my list, continuing on the same example, once Samsung realized what’s happening with Apple, they didn’t had time to build the eco system so they looked out and they got on to Android. I bet it wasn’t an easy decision since Google had all possibilities to create their own devices but it worked and Google focused on enabling the devices and have bigger market share vs building their own devices.

This is exactly what is happening in BPM industry, with Robotics and AI becoming real, the big giants in the BPM industry have distinct strategy to build the competency. Some of them are building it from scratch, some of them are acquiring and a lot more are making good partnership. This is helping the BPM giants to focus on Analytics and having the experts such as #Ui Path, #Automation Anywhere focus on the niche of creating Robots. This is win-win for both and allows BPM to change, adapt by focusing on the core and have experts manage the rest.

Question which needs to be answered - how these partnerships will sustain when one or some of the Robotics/AI providers will get acquired by one of the tech/BPM giants – how would it work when they will have stiff competitors as their customers ?

Another one we shall discuss on the next Blog, will #Tesla be better off selling technology rather than selling cars ? :)