The Life Cycle of a Cool Company

It seems that technology focused businesses evolve at 10 times the speed of other businesses. That has not always been the case. Really until sometime around the mid to late 80's, if you dealt with the combination of technology and business, the "cool" thing was to be decidedly "un-cool". For decades IBM ruled the world of technology. The saying went "no one ever got fired for buying an IBM computer". What that really meant was, most people did not take a lot of chances buying technology. Of course that was when a small computer installation probably meant you were spending close to $100,000 by the time the project was complete (which was probably going to take about a year to be up and running). Intel released the 8080 chip (the brains of the first personal computer) in 1974. Did you know there was an Intel 8008 chip and even before that a 4004 chip. The 8008 chip was twice as powerful as the 4004. All three chips were released between 1971 to 1974, so that is a new chip every 16 months. The first sign that the pace of change in technology was increasing.

We can't imagine that being the case today when internet based businesses are started on what a high school kid can charge on his mom and dad's Visa and then become worth millions in 12 months. The internet has certainly increased that change, because it has greatly increased the rate at which information is shared.

Twitter started in March 2006 as an idea to

day by most estimates it has over 30 million users. Ok, you can argue how many of those users are active, but my guess is the Pareto Principle applies here and something like 7M are active. That is a lot more folks than what hit my website every day. (I know this because my Google Ad Sense account would have more money in it otherwise.) People are already predicting the demise of Twitter, because they expect it will loose it's cool factor quickly.

I can remember when Microsoft was cool. Now Microsoft is the big corporation everyone loves to hate. You have probably seen the picture of Microsoft circa 1978.

Ok maybe those folks never were "cool", but their company was. Microsoft makes software. That is their core business. There is a lot of talk now about how Google is a threat to Microsoft's basic business premise, as things move off the local PC (a domain ruled by Microsoft) and into cloud computing. I read just today that Adobe is releasing new online productivity software. Personally I like Adobe, I think they have come out with some great software over the years and PDF's are the standard, but I am afraid they came in pretty late to this party. To read the press release, they try to sound like they have cutting edge new concepts. The problem is they are "waiting to release" what has been widely available for over a year. In internet life spans, a year is an eternity.

Change is inevitable. The problem is most businesses do not respond well to change, preferring to keep their head down in the sand, thinking the competition will go away. I believe the rate of change is only going to continue to increase, so if you want to succeed in business in the future, you need to be an agent of change. Embrace change and don't be afraid to rethink the premise on which your business is built.

Can you name an internet/technology based company that has remained "cool" over a long period of time. (don't say Apple, they were cool, became un-cool after Steve Jobs tried to retire, so they brought him back and became cool again, but he can't keep that up forever)