It is hard to find a corporate presentation or investor pitch without the mention of the giants of our age: Amazon, Apple, AWS, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Salesforce, Airbnb, and Uber. These enterprises are beacons to many executives and entrepreneurs. You’ve no doubt at least one of these: How do we bring the Amazon effect into our organization? We want to be the Uber of {fill in the industry here}. What would Google do? How do we turn our services into a Netflix model?
People use these examples all the time, but what have these companies fundamentally changed?
- These game-changing companies have brought us a new frame of reference. “Don’t take your work home,” is sound advice, but people do take work home. Consumerisation of IT is a prime example. People’s expectations are driven by their experiences with leading edge technology: devices, software, and platforms. The experiences as consumers have often outpaced the quality of experiences as employees. This has staggeringly influenced our world and our points of reference and expectations.
- They’ve changed B2C interactions and provided a vision for the future of B2B. In our Procurement As-a-Service Blueprint reports, we talk about “the Amazon Effect” to describe a move to simple, seamless, digital buying experiences with procurement becoming more user focused—driven by more technology and changed user expectations. Amazon’s role in changing how consumers view the world and their perception of how simple business to business (B2B) interactions should be can’t be ignored.
- These companies not only disrupted entire existing markets, they also created new games: new playing fields, new rules, new players.
- They have highlighted the power of the cloud. All of these companies are “born in the cloud” (or reborn, in the case of Apple) in the last two decades.
Let’s look at each of these game changers:
- Google: How we consume information. Google aims to organise the world’s information. Google has put all of the information at our fingertips. “Just Google it” has become synonymous for finding information.
- Facebook: How we interact with people and news. Facebook lets us experience life as a feed. For its billions of users, Facebook is a window to the world and the place they interact with others and consume news.
- Apple: Where we interact. Apple is synonymous with the mobile revolution. It created mobile devices, particularly the iPhone, that changed our lives forever. Apple is all about new interfaces and top notch user experiences.
- Amazon: How and where we buy. Amazon leads the online retail revolution that has impacted retailers worldwide and that is in effect changing the face of our cities. Amazon changed the supply chain and continues to push the envelope here, for example its Prime service, which is both very convenient to customers and simultaneously has created a powerful lock-in effect. The name Amazon stands for buying and selling online, transparency, convenience, and simplicity. It has created a de facto standard for purchasing experiences: simple, easy, and accommodating to the user. This impacts procurement in enterprises; many people wonder why buying at work should be so different than buying as a consumer.
- AWS: How computing power becomes a commodity and a true platform business. Amazon’s AWS deserved a mention in this category. It has completely changed how computing power is purchased and consumed and has created a wave of change among hardware and software companies to stay relevant in the world AWS created. AWS is also a true platform company; millions of businesses run their services on the AWS platform, leveraging its ecosystem of services.
- Netflix: How we are entertained. Netflix changed the paradigm of consumption from ownership to use (remember those rows of videos and DVDs?) and from physical to digital. It has revolutionized the delivery of service through on-demand streaming and all you can eat subscriptions.
- Salesforce: How we use software in the enterprise. Salesforce redefined software and how it is delivered. It famously advertised itself as “No Software”, delivering its services As-a-Service via the cloud. It also greatly influenced where our data is stored (not on premise) and took pay-per-use to the extreme with no upfront capital requirements and totally predictable costs, setting a new standard for the software industry. It has completely changed the software supply chain.
- Airbnb: How we vacation and stay around the world. Airbnb started the democratization of lodging by opening a tremendous amount of additional opportunities for travellers. It offers a global, disintermediated marketplace to people who before Airbnb would have never invited strangers into their homes.
- Uber: How we get from A to B. Uber took on-demand transportation to the next level and changed how we look at ownership of transportation assets (aka cars), especially in mega cities around the globe. It also took venture capital funding to a new level; never did a private start-up raise so much capital as Uber. Never did a start-up reach these kinds of valuations, and never did a company of its size and stature not IPO.
Bottom Line: Amazon, Google, and Netflix changed our lives–private and professional—and will continue to set the bar.
Not only have the enterprises discussed in this Point of View changed our personal and professional lives, they will continue to do so. With their financial success and firepower, these companies have the ability to be on the leading edge of innovation with drones for delivery of packages, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence. We will continue to look at the game changers to set the agenda and lead the way in our enterprises and personal lives.
