Feet of clay

I came across a couple of posts by Kent Newsome at Newsome.org that started me thinking how a number of our industry giants seem to have “feet of clay” these days.

There’s AOL. A few short years ago the majority of the non-professional Internet users I knew had AOL accounts. To most of them they knew no difference between the Internet and AOL. To them AOL was the Internet! Today I know very few people that have AOL accounts. AOL tried to hold on to its business model even as changing times were making it no longer valid. Now AOL is dropping its subscription fee and is planning on surviving on advertising dollars. I believe AOL needs to re-examine its value added and I don’t believe it will be able to generate the kind of portal page count that can sustain its current operations. Kent Newsome references an article by Henry Blodget that explains this desperate act well.

There’s Microsoft. Let’s see which past, present or future fiasco do we want to talk about. Origami, Vista, or Zune, take your choice. I know Zune is little more then a rumor at this time, but if there is a way to screw it up, I’m sure Microsoft will find it. A great produce doesn’t guarantee a successful one. Kent stated his opinion of Zune in his post as:

What I am more interested in, however, is Microsoft’s marketing, or lack thereof, with respect to new products. Microsoft doesn’t seem to know how to manage a proper build up to release- particularly with hardware.

There’s Dell. Dell business model of direct to customer sales has not been as successful recently as it once was. It’s been rumored that Dell is considering establishing Dell stores similar to Apple Computer and Dell seems to be struggling to find it’s identify now that it is evident that a change is required. Their recent entry into the Blogosphere has been controversial and less then successful, although the end result of that venture is yet to be determined.

Then there’s Google. First let me say right out of the box that I like and admire Google and probably I shouldn’t have them listed here. But for the life of me I’m having trouble seeing the big picture. Perhaps I’m not bright enough, and that’s a real possibility, but their introduction of a bevy of beta products that cover such a wide range of territory fails to assure me that they have a consolidated master plan in mind. So either they are intentionally keeping this plan close to their chest, or they have no master plan, or they have done a poor job of public relations. I don’t know that this is a weakness in any way except as an unclear focus of perception.

So what do these companies have in common? They are all large with huge resources at their disposal. I’m sure they all have very bright and dedicated employees who work very hard to make their companies successful. The first three, AOL, Microsoft, and Dell, are slow to change and seem to lack a clear vision of future trends and where they want to be in relationship to those trends. These three also seem to lack a ability to innovate and have fallen into the trap of following others who have innovated and found success in selected markets. All of these companies have a poor history of conveying recent core company values to the public in a way that is meaningful.

So my question is. Is this just an example of several companies that are struggling with temporary similar internal problems or has some tipping point been reached in the modern customer centric business environment that is causing larger rigidly structured companies to struggle to change and keep up? In other words, is the environment moving faster then they can?

Technorati Tags: AOL, Change, Dell, Google, Microsoft