… a brainstorming confab about “innovation to accelerate transformation” with a bunch of large company executives. (past years)
Instead of corporate transformation within, I focused on the transformation of an entire industry (e.g., automotive and aerospace) and the transformation of the social fabric of humanity and the physical fabric of reality.
I also challenged them with the provocation that they will never perform this kind of transformation… within their core business. Meaningful change is always led by new entrants, with no exceptions in history. I have become fond of saying this and then asking if anyone knows of a counter example.
Sure, big companies can lead meaningful change… by becoming a new entrant themselves in some new area adjacent to their historical core, like the oft-mentioned Apple (music, phones) or HP (printers).
I had to give the preamble that I might lose my audience… but stick with me. I also said it is not Silicon Valley exceptionalism. Larry Ellison famously announced that innovation is dead in a WSJ op-ed, just before the transformation of cloud computing, led by others, not to mention all of the innovation outside of enterprise software. When Jobs returned to Apple, Michael Dell proclaimed that his best strategy would be to shut Apple down and dividend the cash.
And I provided a coda to my warning to Castrol management that their business (internal combustion engine lubricants) would go to zero…. In the 12 years that followed, they are more profitable than ever as the installed base of engines grew greatly in China… for now. But those executives will all be retired before they face the inevitable future.
Oh, the transformation theme that seemed to be on the mind of every big company is AI/ML… and so I plugged MosaicML as way to stay competitive.
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