Articles
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Docker and the Integrated Open Source Company
It’s been a long time since an open source project has gotten as much buzz and attention as Docker. The easiest way to explain the concept is, well, to look at the logo of the eponymous1 company that created and manages the project: The reference in the logo is to shipping containers, one of the most…
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Best
The key to avoiding disruption is by providing a superior user experience; that, though, requires focus and execution.
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Why Uber Fights
Ride-sharing is a winner-take-all market that depends on controlling demand more than it does supply.
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Differentiation and Value Capture in the Internet Age
The implication of the Smiling Curve is not only that aggregators have increased economic power, but that differentiated suppliers do as well; Omni Software is an example.
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Two Microsofts
My well-chronicled frustration with Microsoft’s corporate strategy comes down to one point: I don’t think any company should have both horizontal (i.e. services) and vertical (i.e. devices) businesses. It creates conflicting incentives: a horizontal business should be great on every platform, while a vertical business should be differentiated. Thus, I was quite pleased when Satya Nadella’s…
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How Apple Creates Leverage, and the Future of Apple Pay
Apple attracts loyal customers through a superior user experience and leverages those customers against its partners.
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Publishers and the Smiling Curve
Publishers used to live at the point of integration. The value of that integration, though, is gone with the Internet, which means value flows to suppliers and aggregators.
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Peak Google
Despite the hype about disruption, the truth is most tech giants, particularly platform providers, are not so much displaced as they are eclipsed. IBM, for example, has been successfully selling and servicing mainframes for going on 50 years (although they are now in serious trouble (members-only)). During the PC era, though, they were eclipsed by Microsoft.…
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The Diminished iPad
Something very strange is happening this week: there is an Apple event, and very few people – including myself – are particularly jazzed up about it. Oh sure, I’ll watch it, and I hope I’m surprised, but there is very little in the rumor mill – a retina iMac, OS X Yosemite, and the iPad Air…