Today I read a financial blog that announced, “The future has arrived. The Internet business model … is working.” The evidence that the future had indeed arrived, according to the post, was the fourth quarter performance of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Research In Motion.
It went on to make predictions about the death of newspapers, brick and mortar retail, and TV stations. How insightful. Then it concluded with, “There are a lot of things that are impossible to predict. Just watch for opportunities. And if you see them, pounce.”
On a lark, I decided to check the performance of the four stocks in question. Since the market began tanking in mid September, Amazon and Google have beat the broad market indices while Apple and RIM have underperformed. Well, I thought, he was half right.
Then I got to thinking about the “watch for opportunities and pounce” part of the article. Mark Twain famously said, “I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one”. Now that’s the rub, isn’t it?
If your business strategy includes waiting until you see opportunities so you can then pounce on them, it might be time to consider a new line of work. First, you’ll probably be wrong, and second, if you’re right, you’ll be too late to capitalize on the opportunity. You lose either way.
In business, the future actually belongs to those who are willing to take risks by believing in and acting on their own ideas and intuition. That’s the entire principal of entrepreneurialism, in a nutshell.
Just look at Google and Yahoo. In 1998, frustrated by the lack of interest in their search technology, Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Paige met with Chief Yahoo and co-founder David Filo, who encouraged them to start a search-engine company.
Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, on the other hand, did more than just encourage them; he actually plunked down $100K to get Google started.
Four years later, Yahoo had a chance to buy Google for $5 billion and passed. In 2008, then CEO Jerry Yang (and Yahoo’s board, I should add) had the opportunity to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for at least $31 a share and sabotaged the deal.
At this point in the story it’s pretty clear why Google is Google and Yahoo is in big trouble.
I read today that Motorola, in addition to reporting a $3.6 billion fourth quarter loss, will focus on fielding a Google Android-based competitor to Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry. No irony there. Great strategy, just a bit late.
Sure, there other factors like technology and luck, but if you want to be successful in business, you need to take risks by acting on your own ideas and intuition. If you wait for opportunity to knock, it’ll likely be too late.
