One thing you should be scared off
Pixar and Apple are afraid of only one thing: Complacency. In the recent Harvard Business Review article, "What Google could learn from Pixar?" Peter Sims pointed out few things which have kept Pixar and Apple continuously innovating. One thing stood out was complacency.
Every thing else is secondary and you should not worry about the competition. Most companies get settled after they have achieved success and go into their comfort zone. Microsoft started innovating and spending lot of research dollars only when they discovered Google eating away their lunch. Should you be scared when your competition is catching up?
Google continuously gave their engineers the freedom to innovate and work on their own projects. Still how come they got kicked out of social media surface? It is only when Facebook started accumulating piles of Google's advertising dollars, Google took social media seriously.
Are you afraid because others have caught up? You should be afraid of only one thing: Complacency.
Read the following as quoted by Peter Sims in his article, "Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter said, in effect, 'The only thing we're afraid of is complacency, feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you're doing doesn't make sense, but if you can convince us, we'll do things a different way.' For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, 'Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up.' When do you run into that?
Every thing else is secondary and you should not worry about the competition. Most companies get settled after they have achieved success and go into their comfort zone. Microsoft started innovating and spending lot of research dollars only when they discovered Google eating away their lunch. Should you be scared when your competition is catching up?
Google continuously gave their engineers the freedom to innovate and work on their own projects. Still how come they got kicked out of social media surface? It is only when Facebook started accumulating piles of Google's advertising dollars, Google took social media seriously.
Are you afraid because others have caught up? You should be afraid of only one thing: Complacency.
Read the following as quoted by Peter Sims in his article, "Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter said, in effect, 'The only thing we're afraid of is complacency, feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you're doing doesn't make sense, but if you can convince us, we'll do things a different way.' For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, 'Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up.' When do you run into that?
