Mike-O-Matic

Good post on Mr Angry’s blog this morning about the greatest threats faced by IT. I particularly liked the first one he mentioned.

1. The Stifling of Innovation - …

Whether it’s the lies of the entertainment industry, cynical people building business strategies around patents rather than actual innovation (or even work), Microsoft (and others) spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about their competitors or Apple (and others) pursuing increasingly spurious lawsuits to “protect” their businesses, it has the same effect.  Comparatively tiny vested interests are threatening the continued growth and prosperity of the vast majority.

A related, 6th threat might be “Market Saturation.”

We are in an increasingly mature IT environment, and the wide open plains that existed to get the current crop of industry giants on top are no longer available.

Microsoft was able to take over the PC desktop and applications space because year-on-year growth was measured in the hundreds of percents; it is irrelevant that Lotus had 90% marketshare when the next year would triple the number of PCs on people’s desks. MS only needed to target the new users. The same can be said for Google. They were able to take a sharp insight (that the order of results in a search is more important than the number) and convert it into one of the biggest brands online. Now they are entrenched, albeit not as firmly as MS, since websites are easier to swap than desktop platforms.

Now that we have these industry titans with huge marketshare and bankrolls, and no clear path to dethrone them, we are guaranteed to have a relatively stagnant landscape for a while. Much of the profitable, low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

Til next time.

Subscribe to this Blog!