Why Do The Giants Lose?
Because they can’t see.
In the biblical story of David and Goliath, David is a small shepherd boy who fights the tall and the mighty giant Goliath; he defeats him with nothing but a sling and a few rocks. Malcom Gladwell, in his book David and Goliath, explores an alternate theory behind the ancient parable.
That David was never the underdog. That Goliath never stood a chance.
First, David's sling is a devastating weapon. It's one of the most feared weapons in the ancient world. The stone that comes from his sling has the stopping power equivalent to a bullet from a .45 caliber pistol. It's a serious weapon. And second, there are many medical experts who believe that Goliath was suffering from acromegaly, which causes you to grow. Many giants have acromegaly, but it has a side effect which is, it causes restrictive sight. Goliath in the biblical story does, if you look closely, sound like a guy who can't see.
So here we have a big, lumbering guy weighed down with armor, sword, and a javelin, who can't see much more than a few feet in front of his face, up against a kid running at him with a devastating weapon and a rock traveling with the stopping power of a .45 caliber handgun. That's not a story of an underdog and a favorite. David has a ton of advantages in that battle, they're just not obvious.
In a fight between an sharp shooter with a .45 caliber handgun and a tall, muscular man with a sword, standing 20 feet away. Who, do you think, has better odds?
From David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Time and again, we see this happening in the business world too. Take, for example, the case of IBM, the winner of the Mainframes era who missed the PC wave. And Twenty years later, Microsoft, the winner of the PC era, missed the mobile wave, despite having a head-start. And the curious case of Kodak, who invented the digital film years before anyone else, but didn’t think it had any practical utility.
Why do the giants fail to capitalize on the new opportunities in front of them? Why can’t they see?
Clayton Christensen, professor at Harvard, came up with a beautiful theory that explains the reason behind it. In his book Innovator’s Dilemma, he talks about the theory of Disruptive Innovation.
As the incumbent companies introduce higher quality products or services (upper red line) to satisfy the high end of market (where profitability is highest), they overshoot the needs of the low-end customers and many mainstream customers. This leaves an opening for new entrants to find footholds in the less-profitable segments that incumbents are neglecting. New entrants on the disruptive trajectory (lower red line) improve the performance of their offerings such that it's good enough to serve the high end of the market too. Hence challenging the dominance of the incumbents.
Let me explain it with an example.
Since the early 80s, Intel had built a very profitable business making high-quality x86 processor chips for desktops & laptops. Year over year, they invested a lot of money in R & D and improved the performance of the processor chips so that their customers (IBM, HP, Dell, Compaq, etc.) could produce faster laptops and desktop computers. These chips were superior in performance and consumed a lot of power (Remember how laptops heat up when you are running heavy operations on your Excel?).
In 2005, when Steve Jobs had begun building the iPhone (the new entrant), he approached Intel (the incumbent) to make a processor chip which need not have as good performance as the x86 chips on the laptops, but should be much smaller in size and should consume much less power (because phone batteries are much smaller in size compared to the laptop batteries).
Intel declined to build such a chip; they felt they could make much more in profits if they continued to improve their x86 processor chip for laptop, instead of building a new chip for iPhone. They didn’t want to spend millions of dollars in R & D to make an entirely new chip for a phone which might or might not sell at all (This was 2005 and on one imagined that iPhone would be such a massive hit - not even Steve Jobs).
Apple went on to work with ARM to develop this new chip, which was both expensive and inferior in performance to Intel’s x86 chip. Early users of the iPhone might remember that it didn’t allow multitasking and running apps in the background for the first 4 years. It was primarily due to the limitations in the capability of the underline processor chip.
Apple knew that having a fast and power-efficient processor was very important. They invested heavily in R&D, and over the next decade, built such a chip. But they didn’t stop just there; they made a chip that was not only good enough for an iPhone but was so powerful that it could probably be used on the laptops.
Apple just announced in this year’s WWDC that they would be using this processor chip (Apple Silicon) in the new line of MacBooks (which was earlier using Intel’s x86 chips). The original iPhone chip, which was much inferior in performance back in 2005, had become as good - if not better - than Intel’s x86 chips.
This, in a nutshell, is Clayton’s Theory of Disruptive Innovation.
As an incumbent (Intel) was busy making high quality products (x86 chips) for high end of the market (laptops). New entrants (iPhone) on a disruptive trajectory, improve the performance of their offering (Apple ARM chip) such that its good enough to serve the high end of the market (laptops).
It explains - at least in the business world - why can’t the giants see.
Speaking of giants who couldn’t see, here is what Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) thought of the first iPhone in 2007 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
Best,
Kaddy