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Originally Posted by fjtorres
Look to Microsoft and all the times they have reinvented themselves in the past four decades:
- they started as a vendor of programming languages for multiple operating systems for hobbyist computers . . .
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This exaggerates the reinventions. They are still mostly an X86 architecture software company, with a smaller computer hardware business. The company name, Microsoft, is still on target to describe what they do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
IBM used to be about tabulator punch cards, then typewriters, then mainframes, then PCs, now it is about corporate consulting and computing services.
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At one point in the 1990's, they were in crisis with the employee count was down by about half.
I will give you that they have made several successful transitions. However, they were never primarily a typewriter company, or a microcomputer company. And what might seem at first glance the biggest plunge -- into the computer biz-- didn't change their customer base, sales approach, or even the focus on punch cards. Early IBM computers were improved IBM electronic accounting machines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Apple used to be about hobbyist computers, then business and educational computers, then about content creation computers, then about digital music, and now they are all about luxury phones and jewelry.
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This is a company renowned, probably more than any other, for reinventing itself. And yet -- these Apple devices you mention all are microcomputers. And Apple has always been, primarily, a consumer products company. The changes you mention are not on the same order as Britannica switching from door to door sales to become a software company. That's a better explanation for the Britannica's fate than lack of agility.
Radically reinventing established firms doesn't work, as every buggy whip company which moved into making auto parts found. While stagnation is bad, so is switching to a business model in which you have no expertise.