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Open is not a moral argument. Defaulting to open is usually the best way to drive innovation and lower costs in an ecosystem, so view it as another strategic tactic at your disposal: Will going open help you achieve scale and profitability?
Critical point here - open vs closed is often presented as good vs evil but should NOT be viewed that way. Rather, it is a strategic decision made purely for business reasons and to gain a competitive advantage.
With a few exceptions, Google defaults to open, and for these exceptions we are often criticized as being hypocritical, since we preach open in some areas but then sometimes ignore our own advice.
This isn’t hypocritical, merely pragmatic.
there are certain circumstances where staying clos...
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When you have a product that is demonstrably better (usually because it is based on strong technical insights) and you are competing in a new, rapidly growing market, you ca...
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Plus, there are situations when open platforms do not work on behalf of users and innovation.
Most incumbents who keep their platforms closed employ the argument that opening up their systems will hurt quality, so by keeping their closed platform closed they are just being good corporate citizens, looking out for the interests of their customers.
In some cases, like ours, this argument is...
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based on an unusual set of technical insights that yielded an obviously superior product in a rapidly growing space.
If you can achieve that sort of extreme impact with a closed system, then give it a shot. Otherwise, default to open.
We are constantly amazed by how much business leaders obsess about their competition.
This fixation leads to a never-ending spiral into mediocrity.
Business leaders spend much of their time watching and copying the competition, and
when they do finally break away and try something new, they are careful risk-takers, developing only in...
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Being close to your competition of...
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Incumbents clump together so that no one finds a fresher breeze elsewhere.
If you focus on your competition, you will never deliver anything truly innovative.
While you and your competitors are busy fighting over fractions of a market-share point,
someone else who doesn’t care will come in and build a new platform that comp...
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In general I think there’s a tendency for people to think about the things that exist.
Our job is to think of the thing you haven’t thought of yet that you really need.
This isn’t to say you should ignore competition. Competition makes you better. It keeps you sharp.
Nothing lights a fire like a competitor.
When Microsoft launched the Bing search engine in 2009, we were concerned enough to kick off an all-hands-on-deck process to intensify our efforts on search.
Start by asking what will be true in five years and work backward.
Examine carefully the things you can assert will change quickly, especially factors of production where technology is exponentially driving down cost curves, or platforms that could emerge.
There is now almost perfect market information and broad availability of capital,
so you need to win on product and platform.
Spend the vast majority of your time thinking about pro...
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If you opt to acquire or build, you must viscerally understand the technical insights and options the challenger will use to attack.
Consider the role of other players whose incentives can be aligned to help you.
Growth matters most.
Don’t use market research and competitive analyses. Slides kill discussion. Get input from everyone in the room.
Iteration is the most important part of the strategy. It needs to be very, very fast and always based on learning.
no amount of strategy can substitute for talent,
The higher up you go in most organizations, the more detached the executives get from the hiring process.
The inverse should be true.
we believe that hiring should be peer-based, not hierarchical, with decisions made by committees, and it should be focused on bringing the best possible people into the company, even if their experience might not match one of the open roles.
In a peer-based hiring process, the emphasis is on people, not organization.
The smart creatives matter more than the role; the company matters more than the manager.
hiring well takes a lot of work and time. But it is the best investment you can make.
The best workers are like a herd: They tend to follow each other. Get a few of them, and you’re guaranteed that a bunch more will follow.
This “herd effect” can cut both ways: While A’s tend to hire A’s, B’s hire not just B’s, but C’s and D’s too.
the herd effect is more powerful when the employees are smart creatives and the company is new.
In that case, each person’s relative importance is magnified; early employees are more conspicuous.
If someone is truly passionate about something, they’ll do it for a long time even if they aren’t at first successful.
Failure is often part of the deal.
The passionate person will often talk at length, aka ramble, about his pursuits.
Their deep interest made them more interesting,
Once they start, listen very carefully.
